


walk me home in the dead of night

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Series: i am enough, i can make anywhere home [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: (stan survives it tho), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Friends With Benefits To Lovers, M/M, if it's a trigger in the movie it's probably here but be careful anyway, offscreen suicide attempt, some crossover characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-11-27 16:49:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20951681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: Richie Tozier met Eddie Kaspbrak for what they both thought was the first time in a shitty New York dive bar, sixteen years ago.or: Mike calls Richie and gets him and his husband Eddie to come back to Derry, so they can finally kill a sewer clown from their worst nightmares. meanwhile, sixteen years ago, Eddie meets a comedian in a dive bar, and it changes the course of his life.





	1. what do you say we leave this place

**Author's Note:**

> title is from P!nk’s “Walk Me Home”.
> 
> **content warnings:** if it shows up in the movie, it’s likely to show up here. but just in case, here’s the warning for child death, violence, homophobia, Richie’s language (dude why), an offscreen suicide attempt (don’t worry, Stan makes it to the end), abuse and its effects (child abuse and, in Bev’s case, domestic abuse), bullying, and other subjects that I didn’t pick up on. let me know if you need specific warnings.

“Uh, hey, by the way, Rich?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not sure if you’ll remember, but you used to hang around with Eddie Kaspbrak a lot. So I figured, maybe of all people, you’d know where he’s gone? I looked but I couldn’t find him.”

Silence on the line.

Then a half-hysterical laugh.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know where he is, he’s in my bed right now and his last name’s Tozier—oh my fucking _god_.”

\--

Richie Tozier met Eddie Kaspbrak for what they both thought was the first time in a shitty New York dive bar, sixteen years ago. The bar lights were dim, the spotlight shone bright, and Eddie had been enthralled by the lanky, awkward comedian who’d taken the stage and started telling shitty joke after shitty joke. For some goddamn reason, he couldn’t look away.

The comedian came down from the stage, and made a beeline for the counter. Eddie had lifted an eyebrow when he saw the man slide right into the seat next to him, all sweaty and full of nervous energy.

“So,” said the comedian, “whaddaya think?”

“I think,” Eddie said, “you don’t write your own material, and it’s really obvious.” Then he downed a shot, because this blind date Myra hadn’t shown up yet, and Eddie was thinking she never would. In one world she walked in through the doors, pulled Eddie to his feet, and shrilly demanded that he take her somewhere cleaner, somewhere _nicer_, and that would be that for sixteen more years.

In this one, she’d come down with a head cold. In this one she would marry someone else one day, someone who would truly love her till the end of their days, and forget about Eddie Kaspbrak who had waited and waited in a bar for her.

“Well, now,” said the comedian, with a damnable smile, “we haven’t known each other five minutes and here you are telling me I’m shit.” He pretended to squint sideways at Eddie, and then declared, “Hang on, I’ve seen that nose before! Are you my new stepson?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie hissed, and threw his olive at the comedian, who caught it in one hand and then just popped it into his mouth. His—god, he had such a nice mouth. Damn shame it was so fucking trashy. “My mom’s _dead_, asshole.”

“Oh,” said the comedian, “shit.”

There was a moment of blessed silence.

Then the guy said, “Seemed plenty alive to me last night.”

Eddie threw his drink in the man’s face.

\--

“Fuck balls fuck balls fuck balls _fuck_,” Eddie says now. He’s not driving this time, because in his state he’s probably going to get himself and Richie killed if he drives. Richie’s doing way better, all things considered, but his knuckles are white on the wheel and his eyes have a look to them like he’s certain he’s going to bomb this all-important festival. Or like he’s pretty sure that the second they set foot in Derry, they’re going to die.

Oh, god, they’re probably going to die.

Oh, god, they _knew each other_ before that fateful night in the bar.

Somehow that second one’s what Eddie’s brain is focusing on. He can’t blame it. Murder clowns are a bit much for it to handle right now, magically-erased memories are in comparison pretty easy to deal with.

“Watch the road!” he snaps.

“_I am watching the road, asshole_!” Richie shouts back, and to prove it, swerves fast to avoid colliding with a sedan. Swerves again to get back into the lane, still wild-eyed. “God. God, fuck—”

On the not very bright side, some part of Eddie’s pretty sure of this much: if they survive this trip, they’ll make it to Derry before the others do.

\--

Astonishingly, Eddie came back to the same bar, and the same comedian was up there telling jokes again. This time, though, there was a rawer quality to them, like he was trying to catch one particular fish from the audience and the rest was just a bonus. Like he was trying to make one specific person laugh.

Eddie snickered, despite himself. The guy really was funny.

The man beamed.

Later, Eddie would find out that the comedian’s name was Richie Tozier, and he liked piña coladas but not getting caught in the rain, and he had a truly terrifying repository of “your mom” jokes. Still later, he would find out Richie’s number, and Richie’s apartment, and how Richie’s bed felt like under him. Still later, he would find out that Richie liked his pancakes drowned in syrup and drank orange juice with a terrifying fervor, which was one point in his favor. Scurvy was a very real risk, after all.

But for now, what Eddie knew was this: when this stranger smiled, he looked beautiful. Even in the dim light of the bar. Even in a shitty soda-stained Hawaiian shirt. Even with his stupid jokes. Even then.

\--

They’re not there first.

They pull up beside the curb before everybody else does, sure, but then Richie sinks into his seat and makes a noise and says, “We could still get out of here. No one has to know. No one’s gotta know.”

“What, and waste the trip?” Eddie asks. “Mike called us here for a reason, and you’re not curious?”

“All I know is there’s some wild shit getting crammed into the back of my brain that I absolutely do not want to look at,” says Richie. “But hey! More material for me to use and for our therapist to work with, yeah?”

“In case you haven’t heard, I’m in this too, dipshit,” says Eddie, smacking his husband’s shoulder. “And we’re married, you’re legally required to get in the middle of this shit with me if we have to.” And if Richie’s not here, then Eddie’s pretty sure he’s dead meat. “Listen, we’ll figure out getting out of here when we’re done having dinner, all right? But I want to see everyone else. It’s been a while.”

“Twenty-seven years,” croaks Richie, and Eddie reaches for his hand, rubs a thumb over the wedding ring. “Twenty-seven _fffffucking_ years, Jesus Christ. And somehow we’re the lucky bastards who found each other again.”

“Yeah,” says Eddie, still gently rubbing over his husband’s knuckles, “because you were a dumbass comedian telling jokes you didn’t write so badly I just knew. You’re terrible, but those weren’t even your brand of uniquely shitty.”

“I should’ve given my roommate a fruit basket,” says Richie. “His bad jokes brought us together.”

“Your roommate was a douchebag who didn’t clean up after himself,” says Eddie. “Fuck his fruit basket.”

Someone comes out of another car down the road, just then, and Eddie looks away from Richie long enough to catch sight of a redheaded woman, her hair cut short. His breath catches in his throat, of no real romantic inclination but rather the _memory_ that bubbles up, the image of the teenaged girl overlaid over the woman: Bev Marsh, in her dirty overalls, with a pack of cigarettes in hand.

Richie, beside him, says, “Well, she got hot.”

“Yeah, that was a foregone conclusion,” says Eddie.

She stands outside the restaurant for some time, before a man comes up and talks to her, and for a moment Eddie just—completely blanks on who it is. Bill? Stan? Not Mike, that’s for sure, guy’s white.

Richie digs his phone out and googles Bill Denbrough, then Stan Uris. Then, on a whim, he googles Ben Hanscom, and for a solid minute the two of them stare in complete awe at the images on their phone screen. Then they look up at the man on the sidewalk, and Eddie overlays the little fat nerd kid from their recently-remembered adolescence over this—_Adonis_, Jesus fucking Christ. The fuck happened?

“Eds, babe,” says Richie, after a moment’s stunned silence, “we had a good run but I’m leaving you for Ben, cool with that?”

“Not if I get there first, motherfucker,” says Eddie, smacking Richie’s shoulder.

“He says like he’s not planning to double-lock the trunk and the doors,” says Richie, climbing out of the driver’s seat.

Honestly, Eddie’s worried about a lot of things, but he’s not really worried about Richie leaving him for anyone, Ben or not. For one thing, Ben’s gone on Bev, has been since they were all little knobby-kneed bratty kids stealing smokes and sneaking out of their houses to hang out. For another thing, Richie might talk a big game, but Eddie’s the one he said _‘til death do us part_ to. There’s a lot of things Richie doesn’t take seriously, but that vow is the one thing he does.

He double-locks the doors and their trunk, because you can never be too careful in this hell town. He sets the car alarm up, then walks off to see Richie hugging Bev, then Ben.

“Rich, you asshole, quit hogging them,” he says, and Richie yields with a laugh. Bev rushes forward to hug him, and Eddie hugs her back, says some pleasantries he doesn’t totally remember. It’s the same way it goes with Ben, and eventually he steps back and falls in place beside Richie. “You guys look good,” he says, sincerely.

“Meanwhile, what the fuck happened to me,” Richie mutters. His hand finds Eddie’s, as it always does.

Eddie nudges his side.

“You too,” says Ben.

Bev, who’s always been the most perceptive of the group, eyes their linked hands and their wedding rings. She doesn’t say anything, but she does clap them on the back, congratulatory, and she smiles as they head inside.

Something uncoils inside Eddie’s heart. This much is going to be fine.

Richie nudges his shoulder and says, “If you don’t wanna tell them, we don’t have to.”

“I want to,” says Eddie.

\--

They had their first date in a Chinese restaurant, run by a kindly old woman in her 60s and her daughter. Richie had ordered dumplings and shots, and Eddie had settled for plain rice and something with mixed vegetables. As a compromise, though, he’d also plucked up the nerve to ask for chicken drenched in sauce, and the two of them had fallen on their meals like vultures going after a carcass.

Afterwards, as they waited for the check, Richie said, “I’m writing my own material now.”

“It’s still shitty,” Eddie informed him.

“Well, I haven’t got a lot to work with when it comes to childhood memories, so,” said Richie, and Eddie blinked at him in surprise. “You, what’re you up to?”

“I’m interviewing for risk assessment jobs,” he said. Risk assessment was a safe job, was a good job that could more than keep him afloat indefinitely, and never mind that Eddie had never really liked being a risk analyst, had always gravitated more towards medicine. Ironic, he knew, given how much his mother would harp on him about taking his meds on time.

“Sounds _boring_,” Richie said, and Eddie kicked lightly at his shin. He couldn’t explain it, but coming out of Richie, the things Eddie would be incandescently pissed over sounded fond, sounded like Richie trying to call his attention. Maybe it was the first blush of attraction, and it would wear off, but he wasn’t so sure over that. “The fuck do you do?”

“I analyze potential risks to businesses’ financial portfolios and assess whether they’re worth investing in or not—”

Richie let out a loud, fake snore.

Eddie kicked at his shin again, and said, “Fuck you, man, _fuck_ you, you can drive yourself home—”

“Aw, Eds, don’t be like that,” Richie said, wheedling. “If we’re being honest here I wasn’t listening, I was being lulled to sleep by the sound of your dulcet tones.”

“Your flirting,” Eddie told him, “is shittier than your fucking jokes. Or your _roommate’s_ jokes.” He paused, then added, “And don’t call me Eds!”

“_Ow,_” said Richie. “Duly noted, how about Edsy?”

“I am going to beat you to death with this bowl of dumplings if you call me Edsy,” Eddie informed him.

“Eddie Spaghetti?”

“_Fuck you._”


	2. dare you to let me be your one and only

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Adele's "One and Only".

Stan sits on Richie’s other side, squints at him and Eddie, then smiles softly and gives a thumbs-up, ignoring how Bev is staring at him, like she’s looking at a ghost. The knot in Eddie’s chest loosens more, because—these are his friends. He knows that now. These people are his family, the closest thing he has, his chosen brothers and sister and his husband.

“So you got married, and Stan’s married too, that’s great,” Richie’s saying to Bill, who’s smiling, “hey, so y’know how Eddie’s mother and I used to have this fantastic relationship—”

Eddie smacks his shoulder and says, “Oh, fuck off, Rich—”

“—sadly she passed years ago,” says Richie, mock-sad and raising his glass as if to toast her memory, his hand shaking somewhat, “but! It turns out, Eddie is way better in the sack than she is, and long story short, we got _married_. My place has never been cleaner.”

“My shower has never been fouler,” Eddie counters.

A wave of congratulations washes over them, Stan raising a toast to them and Ben reaching over to Mike to claim ten bucks off him. There’s nothing but genuine happiness for them, in this moment, the Losers chattering about getting married and Richie making claims about his dick that Eddie shoots down just for the hell of it, on principle. Richie relaxes beside him, and pecks him on the forehead as he steals a dumpling off his plate.

“So how long have you guys been married?” Bev asks.

“Four years,” says Eddie, at the same time Richie says, “Five.” Then, at the same time again: “What the _fuck_.”

“Are you counting from the one that got cancelled halfway through because of weather bullshit?” Eddie demands. “Seriously?”

“We were most of the way through!” says Richie. “It counts! I just thought of the next one as a vow renewal!”

“Who the fuck renews their vows _four days_ after they’ve gotten married, is your memory really that shitty—”

“I thought we were that couple!” says Richie, throwing his hands up in the air. “The ones who’re so fucking sappy and gone on each other you’d puke to see them!”

Stan says, “You kind of already are, though,” and then jumps back as Eddie aims a kick at his foot.

“Why’re we talking about—hold on, why’re we talking about my and Eddie’s wedding fuck-ups,” says Richie.

“Because I cannot believe you can forget the date of your _own goddamn wedding_—” Eddie starts.

“—yeah, but, babe, Ben’s right _there_ and I wanna talk about the elephant that’s not in the room!” Richie leans towards Ben, and says, “What the fuck happened to you?”

“Okay,” Ben says, laughing, “so I lost a few pounds—”

“A _few_,” says Stan, incredulous.

And so it goes, the seven of them all together once more as it should be, catching up and drinking and talking. More and more memories come drifting up to the surface at last, things Eddie can’t believe he forgot. At some point Richie leans over to plant a big wet kiss on his cheek, and he huffs out a laugh and shoves lightly at his shoulder.

Then Mike tells them about It coming back, and the mood dips from there. It dips even further when the food arrives, and the fortune cookies start vibrating. For a moment Eddie’s half-convinced there’s an earthquake about to happen, only—

The cookies explode into monstrous little beasts.

The mood’s just completely unsalvageable from there.

\--

They were lying on the couch in Eddie’s apartment together, watching _The Breakfast Club_ in their pajamas, when it clicked for Eddie. It was three months into their thing, whatever it was, and neither of them had tried to define it yet. Privately Eddie wasn’t so sure he could find the words for it: Richie had wormed his way into his heart and settled there like he’d always belonged there, like there had been a space carved out just for him, and Eddie hadn’t minded this stranger just doing that, because Richie hadn’t _felt_ like a stranger. Had felt, in fact, like a friend, if one who sucked his dick every so often.

Or more than a friend, if this warm feeling in his chest in proximity to Richie was any indication.

“Is it just me,” Richie said, snapping Eddie out of his reverie, “or does Molly Ringwald look weirdly familiar?”

“Maybe you just saw her in a different movie before this one and didn’t know it was her,” Eddie reasoned. He popped a lone kernel of popcorn into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “That’s happened to me before.”

Richie was quiet for a long moment, before he shrugged. “Yeah, that’s probably it,” he said. He trailed off again, and his fingers twined into Eddie’s hair, tender and soft.

Friends with benefits didn’t do that. But did they count as boyfriends? Eddie didn’t know. Richie wasn’t even out yet, although he’d been planning material around it. _Just need the right joke for it,_ he’d said, but his hand shook as he wrote, Eddie noticed. Like he was still scared, just a little bit. If Eddie asked, would Richie come out?

He didn’t really know. He didn’t really want to ask, or push. It wasn’t like he was out either, anyway, he hadn’t told his coworkers, his mom’s old friends, and his few actual friends he was gay or even seeing someone at all, or whatever they were calling this thing between him and Richie. He rebuffed every attempt they all made to set him up with a nice girl with a vague excuse about being busy, but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep on using that before they caught on. And then—well, what would he do then? The people he worked with weren’t exactly the most open-minded people, what would he do if they turned their backs on him? And still, the question: what _were_ he and Richie to each other?

“Are you,” he said. Then he stopped.

“Am I what, my spaghetti,” said Richie.

“Fuck off,” said Eddie, reaching up to flick Richie’s nose. “Are you seeing anyone else besides me?”

There was a silence, and Eddie braced himself for the affirmative anger, for a derisive snort of laughter, for heartbreak.

Instead Richie kept running his fingers through his hair. “No,” he said. “I haven’t fucked or been fucked by anyone else since we started fucking, Eds. I just—” He swallowed, then breathed out slow. “The second I met you I didn’t want anybody else,” he said.

“Oh,” said Eddie. “When we first met I was on a blind date, but she stood me up.”

“Wow, her loss,” said Richie.

“Yeah, her loss,” said Eddie, “because I don’t want anybody else now. I’ve just been telling my friends I’m busy whenever they try to set me up with someone else.”

Richie’s smile was uncharacteristically shy, as he tucked a few strands of Eddie’s hair back behind his ear. “So we’re a thing now, huh?” he asked, as if he was still not quite sure, and Eddie felt something in his chest grow warmer. “Great. Good. Always wanted an excuse to fuck your mom and eat your pancakes.”

Eddie picked up a pillow and shoved it into Richie’s face, and things had devolved from there.

\--

“Can’t believe you couldn’t remember your own fucking material,” Eddie mutters. “You _screened that line_ through me.”

“You want me to perform under stress or some shit?” snaps Richie, practically bouncing on his heels as they walk out of the Jade of the Orient. “You still wanna stay here? I can grab Stan and we can leave like, immediately.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely not,” says Eddie, running a hand through his hair. Then he marches up to Mike, and says, “You lied to us—”

“_Eddie,_” Bill starts.

“Yeah, man, should’ve said, _‘Hey, wanna come to Derry and get fucking murdered,’_ I’d have said fuck no,” says Richie. “Eds and I are going, I got a date with like a thousand people in Reno. Who wants to come with me? Stan?”

Stan rocks back on his heels, shaken as hell and eyeing Bev’s cigarettes with a hunger, and says, “That’s—tempting, Rich.”

“You can sleep in the backseat,” Richie suggests.

“We can’t go,” Ben says, “a lot of people are going to _die_.”

“People die every day, and we don’t give a shit!”

“We made a _promise_,” Mike says.

“So let’s un-make it, then!” Richie snaps. “I’ve only remembered living here for two hours and that is _too fucking long_ already. We don’t owe this town shit.” He whips around, and says, “Fuck this shit, we’re fucking leaving. Good-fucking-bye, folks, nice seeing you all again, see you in another twenty-seven years—”

“Yeah, sorry, Mike,” Eddie says, because—well, for how angry Richie is right now, for how _pissed off_ Eddie’s feeling, fury burning under his skin, Mike really is just trying to keep this town safe, trying to kill an ancient evil. But the thing about ancient evil is that it’s nigh impossible to kill, and even if they could, they could die. They could _die_. He can’t watch Richie die. “Listen, I—we’ve got to go home, Richie’s got a tour date to make and I’m using up my sick days at the clinic, we’re just gonna get to the townhouse and get our shit and then we’re gone. I’m _sorry,_ but we can’t stay.”

“Eddie!” Richie shouts. “Come _on_! Stan, there’s room in the backseat for you—”

Stan wavers between them, caught between debilitating fear and his promise.

“Stan,” says Eddie, “your wife’s waiting, right? We’ll drop you off.”

Stan moves, then, and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming with Richie and Eddie. I’m sorry, Mike,” he adds, apologetic, scratching lightly at his arms, “but this is just—not something I can handle. And my wife’s still waiting.” And he walks towards Richie, shouting for him to wait up. Eddie relaxes, a little, but the sick feeling of guilt still churns in his stomach.

\--

Eddie did not have a lot of friends, truly. Most of the people setting him up on dates were his mother’s friends, and the few who weren’t were coworkers at King & Brown Financial Services who thought he ought to loosen up a bit, find a wife. _A woman will fix you right up, Edward,_ one of them had said, jolly as he slapped Eddie’s back, and Eddie had gone home feeling sick to his core. Did he need fixing? Should he need fixing?

Did he _want_ fixing?

He found, to his surprise, that he didn’t. And so for the most part, he hadn’t bothered to try and get to know the people trying to matchmake him.

He did, however, make a few friends. Carrie White was among them.

Carrie had been a blind date that Eddie’s coworker had set him up with, before Richie came into his life. It had very quickly transpired that neither of them were interested, romantically, in each other, but she’d somehow blown out all the restaurant lights in a bid to get them both out of the place, which was impressive enough that Eddie ended up talking to her again. Without the pressure of romance on them, they’d hit it off pretty well, although they were both a little awkward and a lot traumatized. He was half-sure she was hiding something, but whatever, he was hiding something too.

He’d invited her to one of Richie’s sets, because—well, she always seemed like she needed a little cheering up, and at the very least they could laugh together at how bad Richie’s jokes were. And she had laughed, almost bent over with it, and Richie had grinned down at them but in truth his eyes were only on Eddie. And Eddie—

Eddie hadn’t really laughed, but that was because Richie was there, onstage, like a figure from a teenaged dream. Carrie had to snap him out of his thoughts at times, and he’d missed quite a few punchlines.

When Richie came down at last to join them, he said, “Eds, my favorite audience member! Who’s the smoking hot date?”

Eddie blushed. “Stop calling me _Eds_, asshole,” he said, kicking lightly at Richie’s shin as Carrie seemed to retreat deeper into her sweater. “Carrie, this is Richie. Richie, Carrie. She’s my friend.”

Richie looked at Carrie. Lifted his eyebrows at Eddie, questioning.

“Hi,” Carrie said. She looked between the both of them, and said, “So, uh—have you guys known each other long?”

“Not really,” said Richie, “been a few months since we first met.”

“He was making worse jokes than the ones you just heard, if you can believe it,” said Eddie.

“She _laughed_,” said Richie. “Don’t tell me that’s not a sign of a good joke! She thinks I’m funny!”

“She laughed because your jokes were just that bad,” Eddie argued. “It was a pity laugh.”

Carrie chewed her lip, and said, “No, I—I really did think it was funny.” She looked between the two of them again, as if checking, and Eddie gave her a thumbs-up. She smiled, then gave one right back. That was the thing about Carrie, she didn’t always seem to know what to do in a social situation, but her friend Sue had once said that once upon a time it had been much, much worse than that, and left it at that. Eddie didn’t pry. He knew trauma when he saw it. “You guys really haven’t known each other long?” she asked. “I thought maybe—the way you act, it’s like you met years ago.”

Eddie thought about that, long after Carrie had gone home. She and Richie had gotten along surprisingly well after Eddie had talked Richie down from joking around with her (_she doesn’t take it well when people fuck with her too much, so tone it down, and if she’s upset just please for the love of god stop talking_), and by the end of the night had even hugged them both goodbye.

She whispered into Eddie’s ear, “Don’t let him go, Eddie,” before she left. He thought about that too, wondered suddenly what she had meant by that. Did she know? Had she seen something? Was her comment about how familiar they were acting to each other a subtle signal of her knowledge? He didn’t know. He wanted to call her and ask: _Did you know this whole time? Will you tell? Please don’t tell, Carrie, please._

Which was irrational, because Carrie would never tell. But still. But _still_.

_It’s like you met years ago._

A memory flickered—coke-bottle glasses, dark hair, Street Fighter in the arcade.

“Hey, Eddie,” said Richie, snapping Eddie out of his thoughts, “weird friend you got there.”

“Good friend, though,” said Eddie, as the memory slipped away from him. “She just—didn’t get out much, as a kid. Her mom was overly religious, from what she’s said.” What little she and Sue would say, anyway. Eddie hadn’t pried. He didn’t exactly have much authority for honesty anyway.

Richie made a face. “I’ve met her mom,” he started.

“Do _not_,” said Eddie. What had he been thinking about earlier, anyway?

“But I’ve been holding back!” Richie huffed, which was actually pretty touching. Richie usually never held back. He must’ve liked Carrie, and the thought of that warmed something in Eddie’s chest. “But hey, all right, fine, I was kidding anyway. I’ve only ever known your mom’s touch—”

Eddie smacked his shoulder with a huff. “Your place or mine, asshole?” he asked, with a touch of fondness, and Richie grinned back.

God, the sight of his smile—Eddie’s breath caught in his throat, his heart thumping in his chest like a rabbit, restless and wild. And the best part was: _he_ was the reason Richie was grinning like that. He, Eddie Kaspbrak, had made the world’s shittiest comedian grin at him, carefree as the wind and bright as a star.

It felt, somehow, like the proudest honor that could ever be bestowed on him.


	3. tell me i'm safe, you've got me now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Jess Glynne's "Take Me Home". (this fic is just me answering the question of "how many characters from stories set in and/or written during the 80s can you pull into this fic, Effy?" the answer is not that many, actually.)
> 
> **content warning:** offscreen unsuccessful suicide attempt. Stan's on suicide watch for this chapter after that, but spoiler alert, he makes it out of this fic alive. it's not an everyone lives fic if someone still dies. onscreen panic attack.

The first person Eddie calls when he gets into the townhouse is Carrie. When she picks up, he says, “We might be coming back early—how’s she?”

“Jolene’s okay,” says Carrie. She sounds slightly frazzled, but just the normal kind of frazzled that comes with looking after a hyperactive cat. “We got those shots you were telling us we needed to get her, she’s okay. Sue’s got her right now.”

“Baby, which one’s my toothbrush again?!” Richie shouts from the bathroom.

“Green one!” Eddie shouts back. To Carrie, he says, “Okay, that’s good, that’s great. Don’t let her eat people food, Richie spoils her enough as it is and cats can’t always process—”

“She hasn’t eaten anything that people eat,” Carrie reassures him. “Are you guys okay? How did the reunion go?”

“Not great,” says Eddie, after a moment spent floundering around for the best way to summarize _my friend Mike called us all back to our hometown to die horribly against a demonic murder clown that eats children_ without sounding insane. “We’re just gonna drop our friend off with his wife and then we’re headed back to New York. I’m sorry to fuck up your whole week like this, Carrie—”

“No, no, it’s okay,” says Carrie. “I’m sorry the reunion didn’t go well. Just—” She seems to hesitate, for a moment. “Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful,” she says. “You and Richie, and your friend. I—Maine is not a good place at the best of times, and something about this is—I don’t know.” Unwillingly, Eddie imagines her sliding down the wall, hugging her arms, upset over the uncertainty. “Small towns in Maine are the worst,” she says, finally.

“Tell me about it,” Eddie huffs. “Good night, Carrie.”

“Good night, Eddie,” Carrie echoes, before the call ends.

Richie comes out of the bathroom waving the toiletry bag around. “I’m gonna stick this in my bag,” he says, “wrapped up in plastic, don’t worry, you pack your shit first and I’ll take this with me, okay?”

Eddie breathes out slow as Richie steps closer and kisses his hairline. “Yeah, no, I’m not worrying,” he says.

“You must be really terrified if you’re not riding my ass over taking your toiletry bag,” says Richie, sounding surprised and worried. He kisses Eddie’s hairline again, and Eddie can’t even find it in himself to argue back, the terror is shredding him up so much. “I’ll go check on Stan, make sure he’s not climbing out the window.”

“I’ll be downstairs,” says Eddie, picking up his two suitcases. He leaves Richie there in their room and rushes downstairs, just in time to see Bev chugging shot after shot and making her way to the lobby’s counter, which is _still_ empty. Seriously, who even works here? Does anyone at all work here, or is this just some—some trick conjured up by Pennywise, exclusively for them? Some kind of sick welcome-home gift?

Ben follows after her, asking her to talk to him. Eddie catches snippets, and stops in the doorway when he hears him say _What did you see? Bev, please._

“There’s probably still room in the car for you two if you wanna cram into the backseat with Stan,” Eddie offers. Then he steps back and shouts, “Richie! Stan! Are you guys done up there?!”

“There’s something you aren’t telling us,” Ben’s saying. “At the dinner, you were looking at Stan. What is it, Bev?”

And then Richie, with Stan in his grip and a razor in the other, comes down the stairs and says, “Okay, someone help me take everything sharp out of Stan’s bag for _fuck’s sake_—”

Eddie blinks, shocked.

“I don’t know what came over me,” Stan’s saying, pulling away from Richie. There’s a shallow cut along his arm, and he runs a hand through his hair, shaken to his core. “I was packing and then I saw the razor and I swear, Rich, I swear I could hear _It_—”

“Telling you to kill yourself,” says Bev, and all heads in the townhouse whip towards her. “Reminding you of the deadlights. Telling you you’re too scared to do what you promised, threatening your wife. Threatening us, if you stayed.” Bev looks up to meet Stan’s gaze, and says, “Telling you the best thing to do was to take yourself off the board, so everyone else wins. Right?”

Stan lets out a slow breath, and nods. “How’d you know?” he asks.

Bev pours herself another shot, and sits down in a chair. Eddie puts his suitcases aside and starts to dig through them for his first-aid kit, but Richie’s still got a grip on the razor, and he carefully keeps it as far away from Stan as possible.

“I saw us die, every single one of us,” she says. “In the deadlights. Stan goes first.”

“That’s in twenty-seven years, though, right?” says Richie. “We just make it there and we’re golden.”

“We don’t make it ten years,” Bev says.

There’s a long, horrible silence, as this sinks in. Eddie wonders, morbidly, how he would die—car crash? Unforeseen sickness? Something else entirely? His gut churns, bile rising in his throat, and he pulls the medical kit out with shaking hands. “Stan,” he says, for something to do, something to say, “come over here, sit down.”

Stan comes over, and sits. All the while, his eyes are fixed on Bev.

Ben says, “Fuck.”

\--

The night Richie came out of the closet, he puked up in the toilet before his show. It was a sign of just how far Eddie had fallen for him that instead of standing right outside and waiting it out, he held Richie’s hair back as Richie spewed chunks. Sign of devotion right there, really.

Afterwards, he handed Richie some tissues. “Don’t kiss me until you’re done rinsing out your mouth,” he said, “but—you’re gonna be great out there. I know you will.”

“I thought you thought my jokes were shitty,” Richie weakly joked. He looked like hell, shaking like a leaf, but at least there wasn’t any puke on his clothes.

“I mean, less so now,” Eddie said, as Richie rinsed out his mouth. “You’re improving your craft, they’re getting a little better. The crowd’s gonna eat it up, though—if they ate up your shitty masturbation jokes they’ll ask for second helpings of your gay jokes, I’m sure.”

“I’m still gonna make masturbation jokes, though,” said Richie. “They’re just gonna be gay now. Fuck.”

Eddie pressed a kiss to Richie’s cheek, because he couldn’t not. “They’re going to love you,” he said, with conviction. “And if they don’t, fuck ‘em, they don’t have a sense of humor anyway.”

So Richie smiled wanly at Eddie and kissed his cheek back, and then took the stage five minutes afterwards. He didn’t bomb horribly when he came out, and while some of the jokes hadn’t quite landed as well as Eddie thought they would, they were still enough that he’d gotten more than polite applause when he wrapped up his set.

Eddie met him backstage, and kissed him, and said, almost recklessly, “Come with me to Sarah’s wedding tomorrow as my date?”

“Holy shit, you’re gonna come out at a _wedding_,” Richie marveled. “God, I love you, Eds. Yes, of course I’m coming with you, let’s one-up the couple _getting married_.”

That hadn’t really been Eddie’s plan, but honestly—he liked that new plan better than his old one, which was to sneak into a closet with Richie and maybe give him a handjob. Sarah was a nosy little shit anyway, the look on her face would be beyond priceless. Although he would have to tell the few people he was friends with, first: Carrie, and Sue, and Veronica Sawyer from down the hall, and Steve Harrington from the bakery and _his_ friends. It seemed only fair.

“But first,” he said, “I need to introduce you to a few more people first. D’you mind if I invite a group?”

“Babe,” said Richie, “I don’t mind at all.”

\--

Eddie paces the floor, and says, “_Prophetic visions_.”

“I’ve had them since the first time we tried to kill It,” Bev says. She has an unlit cigarette in her hand and is pressing her wrist to her forehead, and she’s shaking like a leaf. Stan is next to her, squeezing her shoulder, his arm bandaged up, and Ben’s in front of her, crouched down. “I would—I’d have nightmares about people getting hurt, people dying, people—” She chokes on a sob. Stan rubs a hand over her shoulder.

“I have nightmares all the time,” says Eddie, in the loveseat near them, “it doesn’t mean I can see the future.” Even as he says it, though, his gut is twisting in knots, the unease spreading through his system like a rot. _How do I die? How does Richie die?_

He can’t allow that. Richie isn’t dying in Derry, sure as fuck. Not to a killer clown that lives in the sewers. Not ever if Eddie’s got a say in it.

“It’s not just n-nightmares,” says Bill, coming through the doorway, “is it?” He looks—a little sweaty, like he’s coming down off a high, and Mike behind him looks very tired, but weirdly hopeful. “What’s going on here?” he asks.

Stan raises his bandaged arm, and says, ashamed, “It—got to me, Bill. It fucking got to me. I’m. I’m sorry.”

Bill doesn’t flinch away, but he puts his hand on Stan’s shoulder and squeezes, reassuringly. “It won’t g-get to you again,” he says. “I swear.”

Richie moves closer to Stan, slings an arm around him, and says, “Fuck that clown, man. It’s not playing fair, trying to take you out of the picture.”

“It takes all of us out of the picture,” Bev says, her voice barely above a whisper, tears spilling out of the corners of her eyes. “Where Stan almost was—he’ll end up there again.” And next time, Eddie knows suddenly, Richie won’t be there to take the razor from him. “And we follow. All of us.”

Stan nods, his eyes as haunted as hers.

“How do you know that?” Eddie asks. “We fought It too, how come we’re not seeing what she’s seeing?”

“The Deadlights,” says Mike, and Eddie’s heart sinks into his stomach at the memory: Bev floating, suspended, in the air, her eyes milky-white. They should’ve known—if she’s seen them older, then she must’ve seen how they died. If they die.

Mike and Bill are saying something more, but Eddie can’t quite bring himself to listen. He looks at Richie, his arm still slung around Stan, and his brain brings up the image of Richie, eyes red with tears, clad in funeral black, with a straight razor, his hands shaking just before he cuts into his own arm—

He shakes his head. Not gonna happen. Absolutely not.

“—for twenty-seven years,” Mike’s saying when Eddie snaps back to reality, “it just got to Stan first because he’s—”

“The weakest,” Stan says.

“_Hey_,” says Richie.

“You were thinking it too, don’t lie,” says Stan, nudging him with his elbow.

“But it’s not too late, is it?” Eddie says, thinking of nights spent staring at medical textbooks, studying the cause and effect and treatment of diseases. This is a disease, sort of, when he thinks about it that way. “I mean, we’re all still alive, we’re all still here, and we know what the cause for this virus is. How do we treat it? How do we _stop_ it?”

Mike, his eyes steely with a determination Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever seen in the eyes of anyone in Derry before, says, “The Ritual of Chud.”

\--

“I quit my job,” Eddie announced over breakfast one day. They were still living in separate apartments, but more and more often now they slept over at each other’s places, spending weekends together. They had, by this point, gone _well_ past simple booty-calls, with Eddie making breakfast for Richie, who he now knew was not a morning person and could only be tempted out of bed by the smell of pancakes.

Richie blinked at him. Then he took another sip of too-sweet coffee and said, “Okay, say that again, I don’t think I caught it the first time.”

Eddie let out a breath. “I quit my job,” he said. “Between Sarah’s husband and the other guys, and our supervisor not even _trying_ to pretend he wasn’t on their side, I just—couldn’t deal with it anymore.” He could’ve, if he’d ducked his head low and pretended like they wanted him to. He could’ve, if he’d simply walked back into the closet somehow. He could’ve.

But he _couldn’t_.

“Well,” said Richie. “Good for you. They were stupid fucks anyway.” And he takes a bite out of his pancakes.

“Yeah,” said Eddie. “I just—fuck.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, then let out a slow breath. The giddiness of quitting his job had finally faded, and the more practical concerns now reared their ugly heads: how was he going to pay for his rent? He’d been putting money towards possibly going into pre-med, or this six-year program he’d done research on, how was he going to keep doing that? How was he going to put food on the table? He couldn’t go back to risk analysis after that, but he needed a job but he didn’t _know_ what else he could do, had only ever done it because it was the safest option but now he was alone and he couldn’t—he couldn’t _breathe_ he couldn’t—

“—Eds! Eddie, hey, c’mon, it’s okay, it’s okay.” His inhaler was pushed into his hands, and someone said, “Okay, do what you need to do, I’m right here, man, just breathe, okay. Just breathe.”

Eddie crammed his inhaler into his mouth. Technically he knew it didn’t really do anything, his doctor had long since mentioned as much, but the placebo effect was strong, and his breath started to come easier.

“You okay?” Richie asked. They’d somehow slumped down to the floor, and Richie’s hand was on his shoulder, their faces inches from each other. “You’re gonna have to tell me if you’re okay, Eds, I’m not wearing my glasses.”

“Don’t,” Eddie wheezed, “call me _Eds_,” but he pressed his forehead to Richie’s and clung to his shirt as tight as he could. Richie patted him, unsure, on the back.

“Y’wanna talk about it,” he said after a moment, “or what?”

“I can’t afford my apartment,” said Eddie. There, he said it, it was out there now, and he heard Richie’s sharp inhale, the quiet _fuck_ that followed. “I’m unemployed and I think if I go back into financial services I might as well just—bury myself alive.”

“So don’t go back into financial services,” said Richie. “Hell, if it’s an apartment you’re worried about, my roommate moved out, you can just move right on in.”

“What, seriously?”

“I mean, you already sleep here half the time,” said Richie, with a shrug, and he wasn’t wrong. Eddie hadn’t seen his own apartment in two days. “Might as well move all your shit in, make it official.”

“You’re sure about that?” Eddie asked. “I can just ask Carrie and Sue, or Veronica, or Steve Harrington.”

“Steve fucking Harrington, really?” Richie huffed. “I’ve been in his bathroom and it smells like a hair product factory exploded in there. You’d _hate_ it worse than me.”

Which, yeah, was also true. Eddie had been in Steve’s bathroom numerous times and had boggled at the amount of hair care products that decorated the sink. There was still the faint scent of a Farrah Fawcett hairspray in the air, last time he checked, he didn’t know how anyone, let alone Jonathan and Nancy or Dustin or even Robin, could stand it there. Also, one time, he’d seen a damn _cockroach_ in the bathtub.

“Gonna have to sell me on this apartment, then,” said Eddie. He couldn’t give up that easily, not to Richie, and sure enough he saw a glint in Richie’s eye.

“No more commutes for sex,” said Richie. “I’d be right there, in the next room over, and all you have to do is to just knock on the door in nothing but a mink coat—”

“That is a really specific fantasy,” Eddie interrupted.

Richie laughed, soft and bright. “Shut up, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Okay, no mink coats then. No more arguing over who has to stay where for the weekend. Shared chores—that’s more me than you, my roommate was a douchebag. Bathrooms that don’t smell like hair care product. My killer jokes, all the time.” His hand brushed over Eddie’s hair, and his smile was almost sweet. Eddie wanted to kiss him, wanted to take him to bed, wanted to tell him _I love you, shitty jokes and all_.

Instead he said, “Yeah, killer jokes, ‘cause hearing them for the first time makes me think about murdering you.”

“Kinky,” said Richie. “What do you say? Did I sell you on moving in with me?” A flash of doubt crossed his expression, and he added, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” said Eddie, being brave. “I want to.”

\--

Technically speaking, they should all split up separately to get their tokens. But Stan’s on suicide watch (and getting pretty annoyed about it), so they all stand around awkwardly on top of their old clubhouse while Stan pokes around it for his token. Occasionally Richie sticks his head in and shouts a joke at him, and Stan yells something back.

Eventually, Stan pokes his head up from the trap door, and says, “I got the shower caps. Come on down here, we could probably use something else from this old place.”

Bev troops down first, and it’s funny, how sturdy the stairs still are even now, twenty-seven years later. Eddie waits until almost everyone’s come down, and only then does he scurry down too, careful not to get splinters or some shit. God, there were spiders down here, right? He vaguely remembers Stan talking about there being spiders down here, that’s why they’d needed the shower caps.

The old clubhouse is—almost exactly the same as it used to be, just with the added dirt, grime and dust of nearly three decades layered on top. There’s the X-Men comic Richie was reading on their last day of summer, waterlogged and so grimy that it’s unreadable now, barely even recognizable as a comic. There’s the Metallica poster they hung up on the wall. And there, in the cracks, is Stan’s little paddleball.

He picks it up, and smiles at the memory that bubbles up.

Then the voice sounds out, that horrible scraping voice: “_Hello, Losers…_”

Everyone immediately grabs the nearest object, heavy or not. Eddie steps between Stan and the shadows, holding the paddleball like he held a rock during that apocalyptic rock fight so long ago. His heart pounds against his chest, but that’s nothing compared to Stan’s quiet curse, his hands gripping tight onto Eddie’s shirt.

“_Time to float!_” comes the gleeful cry, and—

—it’s just Richie, coming out of the shadows, giggling.

Everyone relaxes around them, and Stan says, with a huff, “Scare the guy on _suicide watch_, why don’t you—”

“What, come on, it was funny!” says Richie, back to his normal voice once more. Eddie has never been so relieved. “You guys should’ve seen your faces, seriously.” He swings his arms from side to side, says, “Hey, remember when he did his little dance? So stupid, right?”

Eddie throws the paddleball at his husband’s face, and says, “Are you just going to act like this the entire time we’re home?”

“Just trying to add a little levity to this mess,” says Richie, with a huff, “guess I’ll just go fuck myself, then.”

“Hey,” says Mike, “the hammock’s still here. Remember, the ones you guys used to fight over?”

“N-Nobody else fought over it as m-mmm-much as Richie and Eddie d-d-did,” says Bill, fondly nostalgic, and Eddie buries his reddening face at the memory. It had been something of an excuse, in truth, so he could be as close to Richie as possible, because even then he felt that funny little warmth around him, that irresistible _tug_. He didn’t quite have a name for it then, the way he does now. “I r-remember that.”

“In retrospect that was probably a sign we’d get married one day,” said Eddie.

“Honestly,” said Ben, “I thought that was the time you guys hit up the fair with me. You were just bickering the whole time and at some point you bought Richie an ice cream cone.”

“I got you an ice cream cone too,” Eddie says, feeling like he’s got to defend his younger self’s consideration of his fellow Losers. He sort of remembers that day, mostly just remembers bickering good-naturedly with Richie the whole time, the both of them trying to finish their ice cream first before the other. Ben is—on the periphery. Somewhere.

“After I said I wanted one,” Ben says, dryly.

Okay, he maybe has a point.

“That was the day I knew I was in love,” Richie intones.

Bev says, “So where to next?”

“We split up,” says Mike. “The rest of our tokens, we need to get alone.”

“I’m sorry,” says Eddie, “_still?_” He stands up and narrowly misses hitting his head on a low beam. “We’re really—we _can’t_ split up—statistically speaking we have a higher chance of even just surviving this as a group!”

“Yeah, splitting up’s dumb as fuck,” says Richie. “Plus, someone’s gotta stay with Stan!” And he waves a hand at Stan.

“You realize I’m not going to try again, right?” says Stan, irritated. “I’m fine. I’m _fine_. I promised I wouldn’t and I’m sticking to that, this time.” The famous Uris promise, as Eddie remembers. “But I have to agree, splitting up sounds like a bad idea.”

“You can come back to the library with me,” says Mike. “You’ve already got your artifact, we can just hang out there.”

Stan breathes out a relieved sigh, which means they’ve lost him to the library. But Eddie rallies anyway: “Weren’t we all together for that summer? We killed It together that time, after all.”

“Not the whole summer,” says Bill. “R-Rem-m-remember?”

And oh, god, does Eddie remember.


	4. give the pain to yesterday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Gabrielle Aplin's "Wake Up With Me".
> 
> **content warnings:** offscreen harassment that's resolved before the scene starts (although it's resolved via punching), and the aftermath of a fight. some discussion of a past homophobic incident (no slurs are used in the discussion bc I just do not want to type them out). also puking. there's that.

Eddie eventually found a job that paid, if not quite as well as his last one, at least well enough that his worries over paying his part of the rent finally eased. As a medical accountant at a lesser-known hospital in New York, he was in charge of the finances and the operational costs of running the hospital, and making sure the records were in order. Practically speaking, since the place was chronically understaffed, running half the time on a volunteer basis, he also kept finding himself on desk duty.

At the very least, it wasn’t the ER. And he liked this job a bit better than he did with risk assessment. Here he was as close as he could possibly get to the medical field without a medical degree, and he was supporting himself well enough that he could probably start looking for a new apartment in a few months.

He did nothing of the sort. Instead, he stayed with Richie, and funneled his money towards pre-med.

And then this happened:

“What,” he said, staring at Richie, Carrie, and Steve fucking Harrington, “the fuck happened?” A more unlikely trio, he thought, had never been birthed before, but all three looked roughed up as hell. Carrie was markedly less so, thank fucking god, Eddie would’ve lost it even worse.

“Hey, babe,” said Richie.

“Don’t you call me babe with a _black eye_,” said Eddie, marching over. He’d been called here because, surprisingly, Richie had marked him down as his emergency contact in his records. It was sort of sad when he thought about it, because they’d only been really been dating, what, almost a year? Eleven months and four days, tops? “What the fuck, Rich?”

“We’re also right here,” Steve piped up, holding an ice pack to his head. His eye was swollen shut and his hair was all in disarray.

“Jonathan and Nancy can tear strips off your hide better than I could,” Eddie told him. To Richie, he said, “Richie. _Richie._”

“Just some assholes who took offense when I told them to fuck off,” said Richie, and Eddie saw a flash of remembered fury in his eyes before it disappeared, fast as it came, replaced by a weariness he knew. “Also, Carrie’s a badass, why didn’t you tell me that?”

Carrie shrank further into her seat, and said, “I—Can we not talk about it? Please?” To Eddie, she said, “I don’t—I don’t really know what happened, I just know one moment things were okay and the next there was this man, and he was saying _things_ to me and, and—” Tears started to well up in her eyes. “I didn’t m-m-_mean_ to,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “I haven’t tried to do anything with, with it, since—since Chamberlain, nothing more than blowing out lights, but he was, he grabbed my _arm_ and he said _things_ and I just, I just—”

“She pushed him hard,” Steve supplied, before Carrie could continue on. “Like, hard enough that he went down over four barstools. His friends got pissed, then Richie got in the middle.” His glance towards Carrie said there was more to it than just that, but instead he simply said, “And, y’know, Richie’s mouth just ran off on him, I figured he needed backup.”

“Did someone call—”

“Nancy’s on her way,” Steve said, “and so’re Robin and Jonathan and even Sue, and yeah I _know_ I’m in for it but I don’t regret it.”

“Yeah, neither do I,” said Richie. “_Ow_.”

“You are staying here overnight,” said Eddie, “because god knows if you’ve got a concussion or not and I _really_ don’t want to take you home while that’s up in the air.”

“But I got a thing to write,” Richie whined.

Eddie rolled his eyes. “If you’re so worried about writing I can go home and snuggle in your laptop,” he said. “And you can write in your hospital bed. Which you will be sleeping in because you guys all have to be _under observation_, what the fuck. How many people did you even go up against?”

“Five,” said Steve.

“Seven,” said Richie, at the same time.

“Six,” said Carrie, not making eye contact with anyone. “I pushed the seventh.”

“I’m pretty sure there was an extra guy near the end?” Richie ventured.

“No, I think at that point you were seeing double,” said Steve.

“Actually, you know what, I’m typing, you’re dictating,” said Eddie, because he knew how important getting to write things down was to Richie. “And I’m not leaving until after somebody’s seen to you and you’ve been observed overnight because Jesus fucking _Christ_, Rich—how many fingers am I holding up?” And he put up two fingers.

Richie squinted, even through his glasses, which was not a good sign. “That’s two,” he said, but his voice carried a note of uncertainty. “I don’t know why I have to do this, the paramedic already asked us these questions.”

“Who’s the President?”

“Aw, fuck,” said Richie. “I have to answer that?”

“It’s a simple question, you just have to—”

“Mr. Kaspbrak,” said Dr. Conners from right behind Eddie, “can I see to your friend now?”

Eddie got out of the way and let the doctor commence working on his boyfriend, but he took Richie’s hand and squeezed, more for his own reassurance than anything. Richie squeezed back, and Eddie felt a weight on his shoulders lessen just a bit. They’d be fine. They were going to be fine.

He heard Nancy’s voice drift over to them, snapping something about wanting to see Steve, and Sue joining in to ask after Carrie. He waved his hand and said, “They’re over here!”

\--

The Losers split up, and Eddie presses a roll of bandages into Mike’s hands and tells him and Stan, very firmly, to change the bandages on Stan’s arm every two hours or so and clean out the wounds and do _not_ under any circumstance expose them to anything that could possibly infect them. Then he starts to walk towards the pharmacy.

Halfway through, he catches sight of Richie, then changes course and says, “Rich—hey! Richie!”

Richie stops, turns around. “Oh, hey, Eddie,” he says, “something up?”

“Did you get your token yet?” he asks.

“No,” says Richie. “You?”

“Nope,” says Eddie. “Listen, though—I know what Mike said, about the ritual and getting the tokens, but we were standing outside the clubhouse when Stan found his token.”

“Okay, and?” Richie asks.

“And it counted,” says Eddie. “We weren’t in the room, we were just keeping an eye outside. It was only getting the token he did by himself.” He runs a hand through his hair, beginning to pace. What Mike doesn’t know won’t hurt him, he reasons. “Maybe—Maybe I can stand outside where you’re going, and you can get your token and I’ll be just outside, just in case.” Just in case Pennywise comes after them, or some other horrid thing does.

Richie’s hands have been in the pockets of his leather jacket, the whole time. One of them comes out now, and sunlight glints off the golden band around his ring finger. Somehow, they beat the odds. It’s a goddamn miracle. “I still don’t like this idea,” he announces, “but it’s way better than splitting up. We’ll hit the arcade first, then—where were you going?”

“Pharmacy,” says Eddie. “Maybe they still have me on file.” As Eddie Kaspbrak, anyway. “Wait, how do you know it’s at the arcade?”

Richie doesn’t say anything, just starts walking. Eddie curses, and runs to catch up with him. “Hey!” he says. “Hey, I was asking here—”

“It’s there,” says Richie, and he sounds more tired than Eddie has ever heard him. And he’s heard him loopy and giggly at two in the morning. This is a different kind of exhaustion, this goes down to the soul. “I just—I know it is.”

So they head to the arcade. Once upon a time it had been a neon-lit beacon of fun and games, for all the boys and girls to come melt their brains into mush playing Tetris and Street Fighter and Super Mario. Now it’s a dilapidated shadow of its former glory, boarded up and run-down, a faded relic of the past. Eddie glances around, then risks taking Richie’s hand and squeezing just the once.

“Don’t slice your hand on anything in there,” he says. “Get the token and get out.”

Richie smiles back, and squeezes too. “I’ll be out in no time,” he says. Then he heads inside, the door shutting behind him.

Eddie leans against a post, and pulls his phone out. He texts Carrie: _sorry about the change of plans can you keep handling Jolene?_

_Yes, of course,_ Carrie writes back. _Are you and Richie okay?_

_y we’re ok,_ Eddie answers. _we’ll be back soon dw._

_Oh, Eddie-bear,_ comes the answering text. _I always worry about you, you know that, always hanging around with that dirty boy._

What?

Carrie never calls him _Eddie-bear_, and she likes Richie, she’d never call him _dirty_. This looks more like—

Eddie shakes his head, and blinks at the real message: _Okay. Jolene will be waiting for you guys. Be careful._ There’s no Eddie-bear, no insinuation about Richie, just concern from a friend.

It’s messing with him. Eddie feels rage bubbling in the back of his throat, at It using Carrie, of _all people_ against him—she’s not even from Derry, she doesn’t _know_. She’s just the woman taking care of her friends’ cat, worrying over them. She’s fine. She’s safe. Right?

He calls her anyway.

“Uh, hi, Eddie,” says Carrie. In the background he can hear Sue shouting the answers to a game show, but it’s too distant to tell. “Is—Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” says Eddie, letting out a slow, relieved breath. “Just wanted to check on you, Sue, and Jolene, that’s all.”

“Well, she’s fine,” says Carrie, sounding somewhat confused. “We’re all fine. Did you need something?”

An inhaler, but Eddie’s trying to do better at not relying on it as much. “No, we’re fine here too,” he says. “I’ll call you back when we’re done here. Should be done soon, honestly!”

“That’s good,” says Carrie. “See you soon, Eddie.”

“See you soon, Carrie,” says Eddie, ending the call. He stuffs his phone back into his pocket, resisting the urge to check on Steve and Veronica as well. They can take care of themselves, and more than that, they’re all the way in New York. It can’t get to them from here. Not so long as the Losers are here, the prime targets for Its revenge. All Eddie has to worry about is himself and Richie, and the other Losers. Simple. Easy.

Hah.

There’s the sound of a coin clattering. A moment later, Richie emerges, with an arcade token in hand.

“Remember when we used to play Street Fighter in here?” he asks.

Eddie snorts out a laugh, the film reel of his memory playing back the summer days he and Richie whiled away playing against each other. Sometimes their fingers would brush just for the slightest moment, and Eddie’s breath would catch right in his throat. “Yeah, you swore by Ryu,” he says now.

There’s only the faintest tug of a smile on Richie’s face. “Yeah,” he says, quietly, and that’s wrong, Richie is barely ever quiet. He’s loud as hell, that’s what Eddie loves about him, for all that he likes to complain about it. Whatever was in there, whatever memory the arcade dredged up, it’s knocked loose something bad.

He knocks his elbow against Richie’s. “Hey, Ground Control to Trashmouth, where’s your head?” he asks.

“On your mom’s soft and pillowy tits,” Richie replies, and Eddie jabs his side for that. “File down your fucking _elbows_, asshole—”

“Something up?” Eddie asks. “Besides my mom’s tits, which, fuck off, find some better material.”

“No appreciation for the classics, I see,” says Richie.

“_Richie._”

There’s a tired sigh, and Richie shoves the arcade token into his pocket. “You weren’t the only person I played Street Fighter with, that summer,” he says. “There was this guy, and he was pretty good at it. And, y’know, it wasn’t like I had anyone else to play with, since everyone was split up and I was still fucking pissed at Bill. This guy...you know who he turned out to be?”

“Who?”

Richie laughs. It doesn’t sound like a laugh, there’s a tinge of—_sorrow_, underneath, and regret. “Fucking Henry Bowers’ _cousin_,” he says, and oh, _fuck_. “God. I caught so much shit from him and Bowers in that arcade, just ‘cause I wanted one more goddamn round. God, Eds, something I said must’ve let it slip, because somehow they fucking _knew_ I was a f—”

“Hey,” says Eddie, turning to take Richie by the shoulders. “Hey. They were fucking _assholes_, Rich. Bowers was a dick and his cousin wasn’t any better. Just because you wanted one more round doesn’t mean shit-all.” He pulls Richie into an alleyway, then leans up on his tiptoes to press his forehead against his husband’s. “I’m sorry,” he says, softly. “I’m sorry that went down so badly.”

“Don’t have to be so fucking _sorry_, Eddie,” says Richie, but his arms wrap around Eddie, and he bends down to hug him, shaking like a leaf. Eddie hugs him back, pressing a kiss to his cheek, keeping an eye out.

No one notices. Eddie lets out a relieved breath, and as soon as Richie’s done, leads his husband back out onto the street and towards the pharmacy.

“Oh, yeah,” says Richie, “let’s maybe avoid the park—Paul Bunyan’s got a bad habit of coming to life and trying to kill me after emotional moments, so.”

“Seriously?”

\--

They broke up on a winter evening, four years into their relationship. Eddie didn’t quite remember what, exactly, had prompted the break-up, but then he was swamped as hell with work and pre-med courses, and Richie had been getting more and more acting gigs, and something had to give. Something had to break.

Eddie moved out a day after, going to Veronica’s place. It was—terrible, to say the least. “I think I’m forgetting him,” he had said, a week after he and Richie had broken up. Saying it out loud had made him feel queasy, like he couldn’t let it happen, but already it was happening: he couldn’t remember the color of Richie’s eyes, the way his hair felt in Eddie’s hands, the way Richie preferred his pancakes and his coffee. It all felt like it happened to someone else.

Veronica had given him a sideways glance, her eyebrows knitting together. She didn’t say anything, but the next day she’d come back with tickets to Richie’s next gig, at a comedy club in Queens. “Just to remind you what he looks like, since apparently your memory’s real shitty,” she said, and drove him there.

When Richie came out on the stage, it felt like the first time they met all over again. His jokes were as shitty and grody as usual, but something about his voice tore at Eddie’s heart. No one else would know, because they were just laughing at the delivery, but sometimes Richie would pause for just a little too long, as if trying to recall. Or trying to forget.

Then halfway through his set, Richie’s eyes met his, and Richie said, “Oh my fucking _god_.” That had—pretty much shot the rest of the show, really, and Eddie could not help but feel responsible for that. Shit. He’d known this was a bad idea from the start, when Veronica had bought the tickets, but she’d gently pushed him into it and he couldn’t say no, didn’t even want to. He was already on his way out the door when Veronica took his hand.

“He wants to see you,” she said. “He begged me to come get you.”

“What?” Eddie said.

“If you don’t wanna see him I’ll drive you back,” she said. “I won’t push. Fuck, man, I’m sorry I pushed at all here, but you were so miserable—but whatever you want I’ll do.” She pushed a hand through her dark hair.

_Whatever you want._

_He wants to see you._

“I’ve got to talk to him,” he said, and Veronica blinked, surprised. “Take me there.”

So she took him to Richie’s dressing room, and said, “If anything happens, yell for me. I’ll kick his ass.”

“Thanks, Ronnie,” he said, dryly, and Veronica gave him a tight smile before she opened the door. Her eyes narrowed on seeing Richie—apparently something about him reminded her of an ex she only referred to as JD, but she never gave any details, and ultimately she and Richie were usually pretty civil to each other—and she closed the door behind Eddie.

Richie, who was sitting in a makeup chair scribbling in a notepad, looked up. Free of makeup, he looked like shit, like he hadn’t slept in a while, like he’d cried his heart out too many times. “_Eddie_,” he said.

Eddie closed the distance between them and hugged him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “fuck, man, I’m _sorry_—”

“Shit, you’re sorry, _I_ fucked it up,” Richie said, clinging to him. “Fuck, I don’t even remember what we were fighting about.”

“The gigs,” Eddie said, the memory coming back to him: how little time they were spending together, how he felt like a ghost in their own apartment sometimes, how much it _hurt_ when Richie blew him off as casually as anything. “The courses. The _time_.” Was he smothering Richie, with how much he wanted him to stay with him? _God, I’m turning into my mother._ And wasn’t that a terrifying thought?

“You weren’t wrong,” said Richie. “Fuck me sideways, you weren’t wrong.” He kissed Eddie’s hairline, and said, “I should’ve—made time for you, or some shit. I didn’t. I just went after the job.”

“Yeah, well, me too,” said Eddie, wetly. He’d made promises to show up at Richie’s gigs, but so many had fallen through, just because of an exam or a project or something. “God. I _missed_ you, Richie.”

“I missed your mom,” said Richie, but it was weak, and he ducked his head into Eddie’s shirt. “Eds, hey, Eddie—can I kiss you? Are we still broken up, ‘cause you forgot some of your shit at my place and if you want, I’ll go get it—”

Eddie kissed him, and it felt like coming home, felt like flying, felt a little like a fog lifting from his memory. Here was his hand in Richie’s hair, his mouth on Richie’s, his body pressed up against Richie’s. “If you want me back like I want you back,” he said, “you can keep it, I’ll come back.”

He moved back in two days later. He forgot about the strange bout of forgetfulness in a matter of days, and he and Richie carved out blocks of time for each other, helped along by Eddie’s own nearly-obsessive attention to detail and schedules.

And time went on.

\--

The pharmacy’s still the same. Gretta Keene is still the same. Even old Dr. Keene’s still the same, prodding at his cheek and saying something about cancer that has Eddie nearly bolt out the door, because what the _fuck_. He can hear Richie’s voice in the back of his head say something about _not everything’s fucking cancer, doc,_ fondly exasperated, but then Keene walks away as Eddie stuffs his aspirator into his pocket, and Eddie hears—something.

_Eddie! Eddie-bear!_

His mother has been dead for well over a decade now, but Eddie stops in his tracks. Then he lets out a breath and pokes his head out of the entrance, knocking on the doors to get Richie’s attention.

“Yeah, what’s up?” says Richie, looking up from what Eddie is pretty sure is Candy Crush.

“I’m going to the basement,” says Eddie. “I think my token’s down there.” It’s only half a lie. His mother has been dead for well over a decade but her voice is down there, and he has to see. And he can’t risk Richie. All he can think of is Adrian Mellon, and his boyfriend in the newspapers, saying, _We just wanted to go to a festival._ All he can think of is the goddamn fucking clown, and the leper, god, that horrible diseased thing.

Richie makes a face, and says, “Sure.”

“I’ll be quick,” he says. “In and out.”

“Oh my god, Eddie, babe, just go get it,” says Richie. “I’ll play Candy Crush out here, it’s fine. Shit goes wrong,” he adds, “call me.”

“I will,” Eddie promises, and ducks back inside. His mother’s voice is stronger now, and Eddie wonders if it’s just memory or if it’s something else. It could be down there, waiting for him. A memory flashes: corpses of children, floating above them, and a catatonic Bev staring sightlessly upward, five feet off the ground.

He goes, anyway. His token might be down there.

He expects bags of blood, corpses of dead children, dead friends as he comes down. Braces himself for it, in fact—dead Losers, decomposing Carrie and Sue, bits of Steve or Dustin or Jonathan or Robin or Nancy preserved in formaldehyde, Veronica rotting from the inside out and only barely alive, his mom’s mummified skeleton strapped to a table. Dead Richie. _Richie’s just outside,_ he tells himself, _and the Losers are fine, and your friends in New York are miles away from Derry. And your mother’s been dead for years._

The last time he’d been down here his mother was strapped to a table, begging for help. He’d tried to pull her out, pull her off that table, but then the leper, that horrid leper had leapt out of the darkness, covered in a cloth. Nothing alive could rot so far as that leper did and remain alive, yet it was moving, yet it had bolted towards Eddie and his mother like a zombie from a Romero movie.

God, and the way it stuck its long horrible tongue down his mother’s _throat_—

“It’s just a memory,” he tells himself. “It’s just a memory.”

There’s no one down here. There’s nothing down here. It’s just Eddie, and a memory, and his fear worming in his gut, his inhaler burning a hole in his pocket. Maybe that’s his token. He doesn’t want to spend a moment here longer than necessary.

There’s something behind the curtain. He knows it for sure. _Else why even keep a curtain down here?_ His feet step forward, his hand reaches out, trembling like a leaf on the branch on the verge of being ripped off.

_Eds?_ That’s not his mother’s voice. That’s Richie. Oh, god, he shouldn’t have left Richie outside—

—he pulls the curtain away, and blinks. There’s nothing there. “It’s just a memory,” he says. “It’s just a memory. You’re fine.”

And then the leper hisses right behind him, and Eddie screams. It’s kind of a loud scream, he’s not proud of it, and then he can’t scream anymore because the leper has its dirty and rotten and diseased hands _on his neck_, strangling him, and Eddie is trying to push it off, shove it off, oh god, was that its _eye_ that just burst like a popped water balloon or—wait, shit—

—it’s wheezing, it can’t _breathe_, Eddie has his hands around its neck and it can’t _breathe_—

“Hey, _fucknut!_”

A pebble bounces off the leper’s face. It twists, and looks at Richie.

It lets go of Eddie, who slumps against the shelves and gasps for air. Its hands start to sprout fur, fingernails elongating and sharpening into horrible claws. A bandage falls off, revealing a golden wedding band. Richie’s eyes grow wide and terrified, and he backs up.

Eddie slams right into Its back and gets his hands around its neck once more. It twists around with a snarl, and _ow_ okay those claws fucking _hurt_, but Eddie squeezes deeper and slams it back against the shelves and screams, “Fuck you! _Fuck you! **Fuck you—**_”

Black sludge comes out of the leper’s mouth. Some of it gets in his mouth, which is just disgusting as hell, but then he feels Richie’s hand hauling him backward, away from It, and then it’s Richie in front of him. “Eddie,” he’s saying, “Eds, babe, Eddie, you okay?”

“_Oh god don’t kiss me_,” says Eddie.

“You’re covered in sewer clown puke and I have standards now,” says Richie, but he looks so fucking relieved. Then he whips around to snarl something and—

—It’s gone.

Eddie grabs for his hand and pulls him up and out of the basement. “I never want to go down here again,” he says, “never fucking ever again fuck shit goddamn _Christ_—”


	5. hold me when i put my heart in your hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Oh Wonder's "Livewire".
> 
> **content warning:** canon-typical violence. also, Bowers and all associated warnings (violent homophobia is the biggest thing here, although again like before I did not want to type out slurs). onscreen non-described vomiting.

“—ever again,” said Eddie, laughing. “Holy _fuck_. That was incredible, but god, never again.”

“I told you,” said Richie, tearing off a bit of cotton candy, “I _told you_, we make it five years, time for Coney Island and a rollercoaster, and here we are! Five years later, and you just had your first real rollercoaster ride!” He leaned in closer, tilting the cotton candy towards him, and Eddie snorted out a laugh and tore off a piece for himself.

They avoided the clowns. Eddie wasn’t sure why, exactly, but they gave the clowns a very wide berth. He didn’t want to prod deeper into his reasons for that, and he was sure Richie didn’t either, so they simply continued on their date.

“So,” said Richie, as the two of them more or less stumbled their way through crowds of children and parents, an entity of four legs and two arms, thumbs in each other’s back pockets, “so, so—how was the exam you were freaking out over?”

“Honestly I have no memory,” Eddie admitted. “I’m pretty sure I fucked up somewhere? I don’t know.”

“No, no, hey,” said Richie, tugging him around, “Eddie, hey. You studied your ass off for this test, you didn’t fuck up somewhere. You did fine. You did great. I bet you passed.”

“Statistically speaking, man, not a whole lot of people have passed that test,” said Eddie. “So you can’t exactly say that with that much confidence.”

“But you did your fucking _best_,” said Richie, with conviction. Funnily enough, Eddie believed him, because—well, he had, hadn’t he? He’d spent weeks preparing for this midterm exam, knowing fully well the chances of his passing were maybe about 50, 45 percent. The professor boasted, on their first day of class, that _very few_ students made it out of his class with even a C, let alone an A, and that had lit a fire under Eddie’s ass like nothing else. Even if he didn’t make it out of this class with an A, at least he would have a B. And he could rub that grade in the professor’s smug face.

He bumped Richie’s side. “You know what,” he said, “I think I did.” He leaned up to press a kiss to Richie’s cheek. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you too, sweetheart,” said Richie, and warmth bloomed in Eddie’s chest like a rose in springtime. He’d heard _I love you_ quite a few times over his life, most of it from his mother, whose love smothered and suffocated, but Richie’s didn’t. It was there, a steady rock to hold on to when Eddie needed it, a light in the dark, a kiss for luck. Richie had seen a bravery in Eddie he hadn’t even known was in there, and brought it out. “Also, your dick.”

“Oh thank god, I thought you were gonna say my mom.”

“She’s third down the list of things I love about you.”

Eddie lightly slugged his boyfriend on the arm, earning a cackle and a mischievous kiss to the hairline. “You’re a fucking asshole,” he informed him. “God, do I love you.”

It always seemed to catch Richie off-guard, being told he was loved. His parents had liked him well enough, he’d said in a set once, but they were more like emotionally distant friends than they were parents. _And I was the drinking buddy they couldn’t let drink the good shit until I hit eighteen,_ he would add, grinning as the audience chuckled, and then he would continue on. But Eddie casually telling him he loved him—it always seemed to knock him for a loop, for a second. Eddie liked it, knocking him for a loop, because Richie got that goofy little smile and his heart would do flips.

Richie was doing that goofy little smile now, and Eddie’s heart was doing so many flips it might as well sign up for Cirque du Soleil. Under the lights of Coney Island, Richie looked beautiful.

That was the day Eddie thought, _I want to marry you._

“Think we should get married?” he asked, and Richie hummed in answer. “Yes or no, Tozier, it’s not a hard question to answer.”

“God, drop that bomb on me while we’re at Coney Island, why don’t you,” Richie groused. “I—don’t know? Fuck, Eds. Marriage is,” and he stopped, and bit his lip. “My parents got divorced when I was nineteen,” he said, “and—I don’t know. It’s not something I ever thought was for me.”

“Me neither,” said Eddie. “I don’t really remember my dad.”

“You don’t remember shit-all about your childhood,” Richie reminded him.

“Yeah, but I have a _point_ here, Rich,” said Eddie. “My parents got divorced too. My dad died when I was younger and I don’t remember him all that well. Marriage is—I’m not sure, either, if it’s for me.”

“So why bring it up?” Richie asked, curious.

_I want to spend the rest of my life with you,_ Eddie didn’t say. _You’re it for me. I’ll love you until the day I die, and then I’ll love you further. You have my heart, don’t you see? You had it from the moment I saw you in that dive bar telling someone else’s jokes. I saw you and it felt like I had loved you forever. I saw you, and it changed the course of my life. If that’s not grounds for marrying you I don’t know what is._

“Tax benefits,” he said, and squeezed Richie’s hand.

“We could just be tax evaders,” said Richie, thoughtfully.

“Sure,” said Eddie, “if you want to risk a jail sentence of five years.”

They walked on, and Eddie said, “Hey, I bet you can’t get that big teddy-bear over there.” And he pointed at the ring toss game, where sure enough, there was a fuck-off huge teddy bear on display.

Richie said, almost sing-song, “Eddie, my love, my sweet motherfucker, I’ll win a _million_ for you.”

\--

They haul their asses back to the townhouse, passing Bill on what looks like his old bike on the way back. Eddie doesn’t pay him any mind, other than to twist around and stare in shock at him.

“Oh, god,” he says, “he’s gonna get tetanus off that thing.”

“I think he’s got his shots,” says Richie, but he’s squinting after Bill as well. “My question is, I’m pretty sure that’s Silver, and if that’s so, how the fuck is he still riding that without it disintegrating under him?”

“I mean,” says Eddie, and he waves a helpless hand at Derry surrounding them, at Bill’s rapidly retreating form, at the townhouse just a couple blocks away, at their entire situation, “maybe it’s the same thing that made us not remember we knew each other when we were kids?”

“Fucking great, sewer clown magic,” Richie grumbles.

They continue, and push into the townhouse. Eddie chances another glance at the counter, about to explain, but there’s still no one there—seriously, does anyone even work here? Eddie knows someone has to work here, he booked the damn room for himself and Richie. Then he looks at the stairwell, and there’s Bev and Ben, talking quietly and looking worriedly at a lone skateboard that nobody packed. It’s tilted on its side, god only knows why.

Ben startles, and says, “What—”

“I’m going to clean myself up,” says Eddie. “Richie, you stay out of the room, it’s gonna be a biohazard in there.”

“Aye, aye, cap’n,” Richie drawls in a Pop-eye Voice. “I’ll save you a shot of bourbon with some spinach.”

“What happened?” Bev asks.

“Leper puked on him,” Richie says, before affecting a different Voice: “Benjamin, _dah_ling, where’s the fuckin’ good bourbon?”

Eddie trudges up the stairs, dripping leper puke all the while. _At least It didn’t offer a blowjob this time,_ he thinks, and it’s a shitty silver lining but it’s the only one he can think of. His clothes are covered in _vomit_. Richie had tried to kiss him a couple times and Eddie had stepped away and told him to please for the love of god not put his mouth in contact with the puke, but they held hands, at least. And he’s bleeding on top of that, where the claws had dug in.

Claws like a werewolf’s. Claws It only shifted its hands to when Richie came.

Eddie sighs as he walks through the doorway to his and Richie’s room, not bothering to close it. No one else is here but the Losers, anyway. He trudges into the bathroom and turns the sink on, washes his hands.

God, how’s he going to tell this to his friends back in New York? _Hey, remember the reunion I had with my friends? Well, we came together to fight an evil monster from our childhoods that we only just now remembered, and oh, by the way, it can take the shape of your worst fear! Mine? Oh, mine’s disease, y’know, so it looks like a fucking leper, and it fucking threw up on me! Why don’t you come to Maine with me next time, it’d be real swell to nearly get all my friends fucking killed—_

Ugh, the mirror’s open. He shuts it and blinks.

“_It’s your time, Eddie,_” says Henry goddamn motherfucking Bowers, right behind him.

And then Bowers stabs him in the face with a goddamn knife.

It’s—really a shock, more than anything. Bowers had been just a bully for a long time before he up and lost it and tried to kill them at Neibolt, but Eddie had thought he was like, _dead_ or something. Except, uh, no, Bowers has just stabbed him in the face with a knife. _Oh, good fucking grief,_ some part of Eddie thinks, _where has this knife even been? Bowers doesn’t look like he’s washed at all._

The rest of him is more preoccupied with trying very hard to talk: “Why?! Why did you do that—”

“Because he says it’s your time, Eddie!” says Bowers, with a crazed giggle. Singsong, he adds: “Little babyf—”

“Who says it’s my time?!” Eddie interrupts, backing up towards the bathtub and the shower curtain. Oh, Jesus, is he going to die here? Oh, _fuck_. Who else would say it’s his time? Who else would gun after Eddie like this?

Bowers laughs, then snarls, “You _know_, Eddie. It’s time to _float_.”

Eddie laughs, too. Richie pukes when he’s nervous, Eddie starts giggling and can’t stop, even with a knife in his face. _I’m fine, I’m up to date on my tetanus shots,_ he thinks, even as he retreats behind the curtain, pulls it back so he can draw the knife out slowly. Bowers is insane, touched and corrupted by It, but he’s predictable, he’s going to want his knife back. He holds it out.

“Where’d you go, Eddie my _love_?” Bowers whispers, almost singing the last phrase like the song, _Eddie my love, I love you so_. His silhouette draws closer. “Now give me back my fucking _knife_—”

Eddie stabs forward, through the shower curtain. The knife meets flesh.

Bowers stumbles back, the shower curtain peeling off bit by bit from its rings. Amazingly, shockingly, _horribly_, he’s still standing. Eddie’s a doctor, he knows he punctured a lung or something, the knife went in deep enough, but Bowers is just staring down at the knife with a bemused look. Like he’s surprised Eddie was brave enough to even try.

“You should cut that fucking mullet, man,” Eddie advises him, keeping his back firmly against the wall as he stumbles out of the bathtub, out of the bathroom, away from Bowers, “it’s been like thirty years.”

Out the bathroom, out the doorway, he shouts, “_Guys!_”

Three Losers come running up: Bev, Ben, and Richie, beloved Richie, sweet Richie, love of his life who has a bourbon shot glass just for him like he said he’d save. Bev shrieks, shocked, and Richie screams, “What the _fuck_—”

“Jesus, what the _hell_,” says Ben.

“Bowers is in our room,” Eddie informs them, slumping down against the wall. Something in the bathroom breaks. Ben’s eyes go wide, and he rushes into the room.

Richie shoves the bourbon into Bev’s hand and slips a Swiss army knife out of his pocket. There’s something behind his eyes that Eddie’s seen before in a more diminished version, a fury he remembers seeing in the ER, with Carrie and Steve. “I’m gonna go back Ben up,” he says, and presses a kiss to Eddie’s forehead before he tears off towards the bathroom.

Eddie doesn’t make any move to follow. Things hurt too much. “Is it bad?” he asks Bev.

Bev gently prods at his cheek, and he makes a pained noise.

“Okay,” she says, pulling her phone out. “I’m going to call 911. You okay with that?”

“_Please_ do,” says Eddie. “Richie’s shit at stitches.”

\--

Seven years and a change of apartments into their relationship, Richie said, “Do you wanna get married?”

Eddie rested his head against Richie’s shoulder. They were watching a show about a widowed private detective who had OCD, and the guy was trying to figure out how a radio DJ had managed to kill his wife while still live on air. He blinked now at the TV, then looked at Richie, and said, “You could not have timed this any worse if you tried.”

“I mean,” said Richie, as Monk beat the DJ up for talking shit about Monk’s dead wife, “better here than Coney Island, y’know? But I won’t talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, no, we’re talking about it,” said Eddie, sitting up now and turning the volume down low. This was a rerun, he already knew how the DJ killed his wife, he wanted to hear Richie now. “Yes. I do want to get married, to you, specifically.”

“For tax benefits?” Richie said, sardonic.

“Because I love you,” said Eddie, sincerely, framing his boyfriend’s face with his hands, “and if we get married then we get legal benefits as a couple that we wouldn’t get if we didn’t get married. But also, just because I love you, and—you’re it for me.”

Richie made a funny noise, and said, “Oh. I—You’re it for me too.” He twisted his body around to scoot further into Eddie’s space, and pressed their foreheads together. “I love you. I’ll love you till the day I die and beyond that, if that’s possible. I wanna spend the rest of my life with you, married or not married, I wanna wake up next to you every damn day.”

“_Oh_,” said Eddie. “Me too.” And he kissed him, and tipped further back until the two of them were making out on the couch, letting the episode run.

Richie would propose to him later that month, in the backstage area of a comedy club in Greenwich Village, the both of them high off, respectively, Richie’s segment on a Comedy Central show and the incredibly favorable outcome of Eddie’s finals. Eddie would say _yes, yes, yes_, and they would make out with each other so much that Eddie would end up ruining the makeup, and they would get drunk and kiss and be bundled into a cab together, giggling, giddy, and go home together.

For now, there was only the wet slide of their mouths, the way their bodies fit together, and a private detective on TV solving a mystery to the sound of their kissing.

\--

It’s nighttime when the hospital finally lets them out, with Eddie sporting a new bandage over his cheek. In the meantime, they’re all four crammed into Richie’s car, Ben and Bev in the backseat and Richie in shotgun, and they’re running red lights to get to the library first before Bowers does. “He said one down,” Ben’s saying, “so either he’s going for Bill or he’s going for Mike next—”

“We should never have split up,” Richie mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Bill’s probably at the library? Maybe? I’unno. He might be talking with Mike about this shit.”

“Fucking ritual,” Eddie curses, “fucking tokens fucking—_eat shit, Naomi!_”

Richie snickers beside him. It’s the first laugh Eddie’s heard out of him since Bowers popped up in the bathroom, and he risks a glance at his husband—he’s still drawn, still pale, but he’s smiling up at Eddie in a way that makes him feel like things are going to be fine. Well. They will be, anyway, once this _fucking Pinto_ moves out of their _fucking way—_

“He does this,” Richie says, twisting around in his seat. “All the time. _All the time_. Great, right?”

“Next right,” says Ben, and Eddie wrenches the wheel to the right. The Derry library comes into view then, red brick looking almost like blood in the sickly yellow light, and Eddie slows them down as he pulls the car over. Parked somewhere beyond them is a familiar blue muscle car.

They spill out of the car gracelessly, and sprint off towards the entrance. What would Bowers do here? Would he try to kill Mike and Stan with his knife as he tried with Eddie, or would he decide to do something more fucked-up than that? The library’s an old, old place, after all, full of paper, and paper can burn far, far too easily. And Mike hates fire.

_Please don’t be too late,_ Eddie prays. To what, he’s not sure, but he hopes that whatever it is, it’s listening.

The fire axe is missing. They push the doors open.

Bowers’ dead body is on the floor, an axe buried in his head. Stan’s pulling Mike up to his feet, saying something before he kind of just—bends over and throws up onto the floor.

Bev shrieks. Eddie yelps.

Richie says, “I guess that was long overdue, huh? Get it, ‘cause we’re in a library, and you just—” And then _he_ barfs too, because it’s been a long, stressful, horrible day.

“Are you okay?” Ben worriedly asks.

“_Am I okay,_” Stan says, his voice reaching a higher pitch than usual.

“I meant Mike.”

“Where’s Bill?” Mike asks. “And I’m—fine, I’m fine. I’m doing okay.”

“Great, now where’s the bathroom,” says Richie, “every time I see Bowers with an axe in his head I feel like I’m gonna ralph.”

“How do you think I feel?” Stan asks. “I’m the one who fucking _killed him_.” He pales, again. “Oh, fuck. I killed Bowers.”

“I can call a few lawyers,” says Ben, “and Maine’s under castle doctrine, we can make a case for that. I mean,” he gestures to Bowers’ dead body, “he did break into Mike’s home and try to kill him.”

Bev’s phone pings, and she tugs it out of her pocket. Her brows crease together, her jaw goes tight. “Bill’s going to Neibolt,” she says. “He says not to follow him.”

Silence falls over them all. Eddie thinks of Georgie—little Georgie looking up at his brother, wanting to come home, Bill crying with a cattle gun held to the forehead of the thing that looked like Georgie. It left them all with scars, and Bill’s is in the shape of his little brother’s name. But he’s got other scars too.

Stan’s gone quiet, eyes flashing with terror at the idea. But he looks at Bowers, then at Richie, and seems to decide on something.

“How many people can you and Eddie fit into the backseat of your car, Richie?” he asks.

\--

Eddie liked to tell Richie stories—not the kinds of things that would break doctor-patient confidentiality, but just little things. The ones about his patients, he took care to talk around any diseases they might have, but usually he didn’t talk about his patients.

Usually. There were, of course, some exceptions. For example: Myra Handler and her husband were _exhausting_, to say the least. Eddie had come to dread their appointments, because Mr. Handler had an array of (real, he’d checked) medical problems and a family history of allergies, and Mrs. Handler reminded Eddie far, far too much of his mother. _My husband has such a fragile constitution,_ she would say, as said husband swooned into her arms, smirking smugly, _he’s so delicate! He gets hurt so easily, gets sick so easily._

“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Richie, while they were having lunch one day, during a break in the rehearsal for a segment on SNL, “that is dysfunctional as hell.” He was still wearing most of the costume, a three-piece white suit that he wore when he was doing the Italian guy, Vinny Veducci.

“You know what’s worse?” said Eddie. “I think he’s into it.”

“Oh, _ew_,” said Richie, making a face. “Oh, Jesus, what do you think the sex is like? Do they like, have a sexy nurse roleplay or something?”

“Can I break up with you just for planting that image into my brain?” Eddie asked. “Because it’s there now, and it’s never going to leave.”

“Nope,” said Richie, hooking his ankle around Eddie’s. “Stuck with me forever, Eddie Spaghetti, Eddie my love.” That last phrase he said all singsong. _Eddie my lo-ove, I love you so._

Eddie sighed, theatrically, but he couldn’t stop the grin from breaking across his face. “I’m still not a pasta,” he told him. “Enough about the Handlers and their sex life,” which he absolutely did not want to dwell on any further, Christ, for some reason it was like wondering about his _mother’s_ sex life, “tell me what’s going on at SNL.”

“I get,” said Richie, “to talk about,” and he dropped his voice, made it sound older, slower, more affected by a drawl, “_the Mystery of the Chopped Up Guy_.” And then he reached over to try to spear a bit of sausage onto his fork. “And then after this I’m talking to Zac Efron,” he added, his voice sliding from the drawl to a pronounced Italian accent as he spoke.

“Hey, hey, eat your own food, asshole,” said Eddie, fending off the attacking fork.

“But yours tastes better,” Richie said, with a smirk. Eddie knocked his ankle against Richie’s, and batted away his fork again. “Okay, okay. Hey, by the way, one of the writers is working on a sketch about werewolves, and, uh, he asked me if I wanted in on it.”

“You’re scared of werewolves, right?” Eddie asked. He simply recalled Richie being terrified of them, to the point where he seemed to pale at even the mention of them.

“Well, yeah, but,” said Richie, before he stopped and let out a breath. “Exposure therapy, y’know?” he said, with a smile that seemed more brittle than genuine. “Anyway, it’s a pretty shitty phobia, it’s not like werewolves _exist_. What the fuck did I get up to when I was a kid, did I watch a werewolf movie at five or something?”

“Why’re you asking me?” said Eddie, rolling his eyes. “But—you’re sure about this?”

“Yeah, I mean,” said Richie, with a shrug. “It’s not like the clown sketch.”

They both shuddered at the memory of the clown sketch.

“Thank god Ben Affleck never sued you for slugging him,” Eddie said. “You could still turn it down, if you’re not sure about it. But if you are then—well, why not?”

The werewolf skit never did get produced, though, and Eddie couldn’t help but feel relieved about that. Whatever scared Richie about werewolves, it seemed to come from the same strange, inexplicable place where his fear of clowns came from, where part of Eddie’s own quiet dread of Myra Handler seemed to sprout from. Exposure meant dragging that place out into the light, and Eddie was more terrified than anything of even looking at it even in the dark, let alone dragging it into the light. Something about that place—

(you’ll float too Eddie-bear _you’ll float too_)

—it scared him, in the deepest pits of his soul.

\--

_Look after Jolene for us if we don’t come back,_ Eddie texts Carrie. He shuts his phone off before she can text back, before he can send any more last messages—Carrie will be worried enough, no need to scare Steve and Veronica too. Then he stuffs his phone back into his pocket and walks into Neibolt, taking up the rear behind a grim-faced Stan.

It’s as dilapidated and run-down as ever, perhaps even moreso. Twenty-seven years’ worth of dust and grime have settled over the place, and there are holes in the house that look a little newer. Eugh.

Black sludge oozes down the stairs, like lava consuming everything in its path, sizzling like meat cooking on a pan. Rotten, Eddie dazedly thinks, this place is rotten and dead. _We shouldn’t be here._

“Well,” says Richie, “I love what he’s done with the place.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Bev mutters.

They don’t mean to split up. It’s just that one minute Eddie’s about to follow Richie, Bill and Stan and the next Ben screams, and when he whips around the door slams shut in front of him. “_Guys!_” Richie shouts, and there’s the thud of fists against the door.

Eddie grabs the doorknob and tries to turn, tries to yank, tries to push the door open, but it stays, stubbornly, shut. Ben’s screaming, so Eddie says, “I have to—I’ll be right back,” and runs to Ben’s side.

Mike and Bev are already there, holding Ben up as he screams, trying to get his shirt off him so they can see what the fuck is going on, and Eddie finds his hand wandering to where he’d once have kept his fanny pack. Shit. Shit, first-aid kit, he’s a doctor, why doesn’t he have a first-aid kit why did he—

He grabs hold of Ben too, takes his jacket off, and says, “What the _fuck_?”

“I don’t know!” says Bev. There are letters carving themselves into Ben’s flesh. _It’s not real,_ Eddie thinks, but it is real, Ben is gasping, bleeding, oh god—

Eddie does the only thing he can think of to do—he tries to wind his jacket around Ben’s torso to staunch the bleeding, keep him safe. But something cuts into his finger, into the fabric, and Eddie jerks away with a curse.

Bev looks up. Her eyes grow wide, then hard.

Eddie looks up too, along with Mike, and—

It’s funny, how screams work. Eddie has been scared before, enough for a scream to tear free from his throat. He’s had to break the news of the death of loved ones to people whose only recourse is to scream out their horror and anger and grief, the sound of it raw and horrible in the hospital. And sometimes, in fact very rarely...not even a scream can express the sort of fear and horror that goes down deep, deep within someone’s soul, deeper than anything can reach.

Eddie’s scream dies in his throat when he catches sight of the mirror atop the old fireplace. Pennywise is there, eyes glowing a sickly yellow, grinning like a madman, cackling. He has a knife in his hand, carving the letters _HOME AT LAST_ into Ben’s skin.

It lifts the knife to Ben’s throat. Starts to slice.

Bev stands, picks up the fencepost she walked into Neibolt with, and swings with her own scream—but not of terror, not of fear. _Don’t touch him. Don’t you fucking dare._

The mirror shatters. The letters disappear. Ben slumps with a broken gasp, his hand flying to his throat. The fresh cut on Eddie’s hand disappears as well, like it had never even been there.

“You okay?” Mike asks.

“I’m,” says Ben, but his eyes are on Bev, his eyes are full of adoration and gratitude and love, so much _love_ that Eddie recognizes it, “I’m fine.”

“Great,” says Eddie, “great, good, we kinda have to find the others because—”

Stan screams, “_Oh what the fuck,_” from somewhere.

“—that could happen,” Eddie finishes.

\--

For their ten-year anniversary, Eddie bought himself and Richie two plane tickets to Melbourne for the International Comedy Festival held there. Richie did not faint, but it was a very near thing. They wouldn’t be there the whole four months, but a week was long enough for Richie to dip his toe in and get more international attention, and he’d more than once mentioned wanting to even just _be_ there.

It was a bit late for getting into an actual festival venue, but that was fine. Richie’s manager had managed to get a couple of gigs at a bar near the Melbourne Town Hall, and Eddie had gotten himself front-row tickets, owing to the fact that he was the comedian’s fiancé and therefore _entitled_ to a ticket in the front row.

Wriggling into a very crowded front row with a beer in one hand, Eddie couldn’t help but laugh at the memory of another bar bubbling up—hard to believe their first meeting was really ten years ago. Somehow, it felt as if they’d known each other for far longer than that.

Richie came out onto the stage with a half-full bottle of water, and his eyes lit up when they landed on Eddie in the front row. “Good evening, Melbourne,” he said into the mic, “and to the cute fellow in the front row in particular.”

“Fuck off, Rich,” Eddie laughed.

“Cute, cute, _cute_,” said Richie. “I’m going to get married to that!” He straightened up as the audience clapped, then said, “Oh, wow, thanks. You know, in New York, every time I say I got engaged the most I get is just,” and he pitched up his voice and mimed texting on his phone, “_Wow. Congrats, Richie. Good for you._ Wow, hey, I wasn’t trying to rub in the fact that I’m getting more dick than you, _Sharon_, Jesus, maybe if you looked up from your phone sometimes you’d actually _meet someone_.”

And he went off from there, talking about being engaged, meeting actual celebrities, somehow managing to not freak out while meeting actual celebrities, and even about Eddie’s tendency to attack cleaning with a vengeance. “I think a dust bunny killed him in a past life,” Richie said to the audience near the end of his routine, leaning in like he was whispering a secret, “that’s why he’s so obsessed with making sure our apartment’s so clean I can check my reflection in _the floor_.”

“You’re fucking welcome!” Eddie called, and Richie laughed as the audience clapped, then walked off the stage for the next comic to take it. He waited through a few more routines—some good, some mediocre—before he took his beer and headed backstage.

Richie was munching on a cracker as Eddie came in, and he lit up when he caught sight of him. “Eddie!” he said, twisting in his chair and all but falling out of it. His manager, Joe, sighed.

“I’ll just leave you folks to it,” he said, and made a quick exit.

“Hi, Rich,” said Eddie, already smiling. “Hey, remember ten years ago, we met in a bar kinda like this?”

“Yeah, and you threw your drink in my face,” said Richie with a laugh, pulling him in for a hug. When he let go, Eddie pulled up a chair and sat down in front of him, close enough that their ankles knocked together, close enough that it wouldn’t take too much for Eddie to end up in Richie’s chair too, small as it was.

“You made a ‘your mom’ joke about _my dead mom_, genius, of course I got mad,” said Eddie.

“What I always wondered,” said Richie, “what I always wanted to know, was: why’d you come back?”

“Hm?”

“Why’d you come back?” Richie repeated.

Eddie thought back to the second show that he attended. Richie was still pretty bad, then, and he was still somewhat irritated by this ridiculous comedian who thought the very height of humor was a joke about his dead mom. Still, all that aside, he wasn’t all bad to look at, and something about him—

“You just pulled at me,” said Eddie.

“Really,” said Richie, raising an eyebrow. “I was that irresistible?”

“Well, I can’t really explain it,” said Eddie. “I wanted to see you again, yeah, I thought you were kinda attractive. But there was—I don’t know. It felt like I’d known you forever, and I felt kinda obligated to at least go see what you were doing on purpose. Not just ‘cause I got stood up by my date.” He paused. “The sex was absolutely because I thought you were hot, though.”

“I gotta send your blind date a fruit basket,” said Richie. “If she didn’t stand you up while I was doing that bar, we wouldn’t be here now.”

“Getting sunburned?”

“No, dick, in Melbourne, at a comedy festival, celebrating our ten-year anniversary.” Richie leaned forward now to kiss him, soft and sweet. “I love you,” he said, “you make me a better person.” Maybe that was what all marriage needed, all a relationship really needed: two people who made each other better, in so many ways.

“You make me a braver person,” said Eddie, before he kissed him back. They kissed for a few more minutes before Richie broke away.

“Hey, by the way,” he started, “I’ve been thinking, our building’s fine with pets, right?”


	6. step right over the line and onto borrowed time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from A Fine Frenzy's "Borrowed Time".
> 
> **content warnings:** Canon-typical gore and violence. internalized homophobia manifested via magic hallucinations (fuckin' clown). major character is seriously injured.
> 
> please note that I do not kill major characters. not now and not ever. however, I do like putting my favorite characters through hell. (but they'll be fine, they all make it out.)

Ben is first to grab a knife and stab the spider-head-thing trying to eat Richie, if only because Eddie’s the last through the door. Bill pulls it off as soon as it goes limp, throws it to the side, and Stan makes a horrible broken noise that sounds vaguely like _that’s not her._

The wife, then. It looked like Stan’s wife. The head is gaunt and grey, but in life she’s probably a looker. Its hair falls, lifeless and lank, in dirty blonde clumps. As they watch, the head starts to pull itself out of the room with a spider leg, giggling all the while.

“Well,” says Richie, breaking the horrified silence, “least it wasn’t the fucking werewolf this time.”

Stan rushes to Richie’s side then, as if animated by his words. “Rich?” he says. “Rich, fuck, I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_, I didn’t—don’t be mad, please, I saw Patricia and I couldn’t—I _couldn’t_.”

Bill shuts his mouth, the brief flicker of anger passing away from his face. “Hey,” he says. “It w-w-w-wants us s-suh-scared. Don’t give It wh-what it wants.”

“Honestly,” says Richie, reaching over to squeeze Stan’s hand, “if it was Eddie, I’d have lost it.” He glances at the refrigerator like it’s done him some personal harm, and says, “Okay, let’s go, I do not wanna stay near that thing any longer than necessary.”

Eddie’s in agreement. They’re lucky so far that It hasn’t decided to try looking like their friends from New York, but they can’t push their luck any further. “She’s safe,” he says to Stan. “She’s back home waiting for you.” It can’t reach that far, which is the only reason why Eddie’s not panicking more about his own friends—It can’t get to New York, can only be in Derry. Which isn’t really much of a comfort, but still.

Still.

They keep going. “Grey water,” Eddie mutters. “I did not miss this part.”

“Worried you’re gonna get a staph infection, Eddie?” Richie jokes.

“Worried we’re _all_ gonna get infected by something at this rate,” Eddie shoots back. He looks over at Stan and says, “Arm _up_, Uris.”

“It’s up, it’s up,” says Stan, holding up his bandaged arm as they wade deeper into the water. “Aren’t you the one with a hole in your cheek?”

“And every second I’m terrified it’ll get infected,” says Eddie.

“That’s if the killer clown doesn’t get us first,” says Richie, with a manic cheer that Eddie recognizes as his way of coping with stress without puking on people. “But hey, if he does, least we don’t have to worry about getting infected, huh?”

Bev bats a teddy bear out of the way with her fence post. Eddie very carefully steps around a floating heap of rotting trash. After this he is having five showers and he is going to get Richie to have three before either of them have sex again. _After this,_ he thinks, viciously, believing with all his might that there is an _after_.

Then Bev stops, and turns to look into the tunnel, her brows furrowing. “Did you guys hear that?” she asks.

“H-hear what?” Bill asks.

Bev hesitates. Then she says, “I thought I heard something.”

Stan tenses, as he helps Richie up. “Bev,” he says, warningly.

She turns around.

Something bursts from under the water, a grey dead figure with stringy dark hair and wild eyes, wearing a prom dress covered in grey water and, horribly, blood. “_Time to sink!_” the thing shouts, grabbing Beverly and diving downwards.

“Bev!” screams Ben, and he dives in after them. Mike and Bill join fast, and Eddie glances at Richie, who’s gotten hold of a frozen Stan’s hand.

“_Go,_” says Richie. “I’ll keep Stan safe up here.”

Eddie goes, and dives down deep.

\--

(Richie squeezes Stan’s hand as the rest of the Losers dive into the water after Bev, trying to ignore the rabbit-fast thump of fear threaded through his heartbeat. “Hey,” he says.

“I don’t think I can do this,” says Stan, sounding queerly calm. The sort of calm, Richie recognizes, that’s really panic crystallized. “I _really_ don’t know if I can do this. It got to me and I almost _killed myself_ instead of dealing with it. It had you and all I could think of was that It _looked like Patricia_. If I keep going with you guys—” He falters. “I could get you all killed,” he says. “All It would have to do is look like Patricia.”

“Hey,” says Richie, then: “If it was me, and the thing in the fridge looked like Eddie, d’you know what I would’ve done?”

“What, screamed at it about his mom’s vagina?” Stan says.

“Had a panic attack,” says Richie. “And then screamed about his mom’s vagina while having a panic attack, and been completely fucking useless the whole time.” He shrugs. “We’re all fucking terrified, Stan, it’s a murderous sewer clown that eats kids and wants us dead. If it wasn’t for Eddie, I think I’d have left Derry already and taken my chances. But do you know something?”

“That you two make each other braver,” says Stan.

“Okay, true, but wrong takeaway,” says Richie. “Stan, you’re one of the best people I know.”

“Must not know a lot of people, then,” says Stan, but his eyes are shining with tears.

“Who killed a sewer clown before he was fourteen?” Richie asks.

Stan blinks at him a moment, then smiles, tentatively. “Me,” he says.

“Who axed Bowers in the head in a library and saved Mike’s life?”

“Me,” says Stan.

“Who swore in his own speech in front of the entire congregation at his own goddamn Bar Mitzvah?”

Stan laughs, now. “Also me,” he says.

“You’re braver than you think, Stan the Man,” says Richie, patting his shoulder and pulling him into his side for a hug. “You can do this.”

Stan relaxes, now. Then he looks into the water and frowns. “So should we go in there and get them out, then?” he asks, but just then the Losers break the surface, with Bev sputtering and Eddie spitting out grey water, cursing about infections and diseases and his cheek hole.

“Eh, they’re fine,” says Richie.)

\--

Richie left SNL on a high note, and booked a comedy tour that would air as a Netflix special in the next year. Eddie Skyped him every night, refreshing his memory as much as he could, but even then details would slip sometimes—the way Richie liked his coffee and his pancakes, the way he looked in the same bed as Eddie, the feel of his hair in Eddie’s hands.

“That’s—concerning,” Carrie had said, frowning, when Eddie told her about it once.

“What?”

“Sue sometimes goes to conferences that last a month,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation. This thing between her and Sue was so new that they didn’t quite have a label for it yet, but they had been _CarrieandSue_ for so long in Eddie’s head that it had mostly just seemed a logical conclusion. “I don’t forget things about her. Not the way you and Richie seem to, when you’re apart more than a week.”

“You don’t think it’s some kind of—amnesia, right?” Eddie asked, worriedly.

Carrie shrugged.

Later, she showed up at his apartment and presented him with tickets to Richie’s Chicago show. He packed his things, called out of work for the next week, and hugged Carrie fiercely.

Then he went to Chicago. He found Richie’s show, sat down in the front row. When Richie came out, he blinked at him in shock, then he said into the mic, “My fiancé’s here! Holy _shit_, Eddie Spaghetti, am I finally gonna be fucked in the dressing room like I always wanted?”

“Don’t call me that!” Eddie said, laughing.

He did not fuck Richie in the dressing room after the show, which he was sure Joe was eternally grateful for. They did, however, make out thoroughly in the taxi back to Richie’s hotel, and barely managed to keep their hands off each other until they got up to Richie’s room.

The TV was playing a werewolf movie. Eddie shut it off before it got to the werewolf, and they took their clothes off.

They barely made it to the bedroom.

Afterwards, Eddie took a shower, Richie brushed his teeth, and they both crawled back into bed. “I missed you,” he said.

“Missed you too,” Richie said, nipping at his neck. “How long are you staying?”

“I called out for a week,” said Eddie. “Conners and O’Malley can take the Handlers if they show up.” Conners already had, and O’Malley was a stone wall Myra Handler could not break.

“Oh my god, you’re gonna inflict the Handlers on them so you can spend time with me,” said Richie, almost gleeful at the idea, “you bastard. I love you.”

“The things I do for love,” said Eddie, and kissed him. “Hey. What’s the song you wanna dance to, at our wedding?”

“Don’t You Forget About Me,” said Richie, almost immediately.

There was an irony there, but Eddie didn’t quite know what it was about. “As if I ever could,” he said, and threw an arm over Richie’s torso. Eleven years. They’d be getting married in the winter, months down the line, and Eddie felt—well, he still felt like there were pieces missing, people who should be there who had slipped from Richie’s memory, but there was Richie, and that would be enough.

\--

Considering the Losers’ luck so far, of course everything goes directly to shit soon enough. Mike hung a lot of hope on a ritual that apparently did not work, and now they’re split up and running, things are that bad. Stan’s gone with Mike right now, last Eddie checked, so he’s not too worried. Like, there’s a ton of things he’s panicking over in this moment, but Stan’s general state is somewhere below the clown tentacle snapping at him and Richie.

Bev, Ben, Bill—Eddie hasn’t seen them since shit went to hell.

“Okay, okay,” says Richie, squinting at the three doors. He has his Swiss army knife in hand. “He’s fucking with us. Bill and I had to do this last time we were here I think?”

“Which doors did you pick the last time?” Eddie asks, voice climbing higher and higher in pitch.

“Uh, um,” says Richie, shutting his eyes. “The ones on both ends?”

“Regular scary,” says Eddie.

“I was gonna go for Very Scary but yeah, good point,” says Richie, putting his body in between himself and Eddie and gingerly pushing the middle door open. There’s just—little Richie, Hawaiian shirt and coke-bottle glasses and all, wearing a varsity jacket that’s a little too big for him, standing in the middle of the kissing bridge. A golden wedding band glints off his right ring finger.

“He’s going to leave,” says little Richie, and he sounds so sad and devastated. “They always go, don’t they? If you don’t hold on to him, he’s going to leave you.” He cocks his head to the side. “Hey, Eddie-bear,” he says, almost sad, almost disappointed, so much like Eddie’s _mother_ that Eddie feels bile rise in his throat. “Do you know the divorce rate in America? I’m curious, I’m just asking.”

“_Je_sus,” says Richie.

“Can I show you something?” little Richie asks. “Can I show you how long I’ve been carrying this torch? Been rotting from the inside out since the day we met, Eds, it’s pathetic. I’ve wanted you so long it makes me _sick_.” He steps back, and Eddie sees the carving: _R+E_.

“But now you’re here,” little Richie goes on, and there’s a glint of yellow in his eyes. “You’re _here_, and I won’t let you go. I won’t let you _go_, not ever. Never ever ever ever—”

He sprouts fur, his teeth grow sharp. The varsity jacket tears, and Eddie hears the sickening sound of bones snapping and reforming.

“_Eddie my lo-ove,_” the werewolf sings, “_I love you so._”

“Eddie, get the fuck out of here,” says Richie, pulling him back, but the werewolf lunges at Richie. The knife goes flying, skitters to Eddie’s feet. “Get _out of here!_” screams Richie, before he lets out a horrible pained cry.

It’s funny, how adrenaline works. It’s like time slows down around him, like the world suddenly jumps into higher definition. He hears the werewolf’s cackling laughter, Richie’s screams as he tries to fight it off, sees the full moon above their heads and the varsity jacket that reads TOZIER.

_Silver kills werewolves,_ he thinks, and picks up the knife. “Hey, fucker, this is fucking silver!” he snaps, and stabs the werewolf once, twice, three times, over and over again till it makes a horrible wheezing gasp. Then it falls over, apparently dead.

Eddie doesn’t bother to check. He grabs Richie and runs towards the door, slamming it closed as Richie slumps down, gasping.

“Oh my fucking god,” says Richie. “He’s not fucking with us.” He staggers to his feet and yanks the Not Scary At All door open, and blinks. “Jolene?” he says, flabbergasted.

Eddie, still running on fumes and adrenaline, has to move behind Richie to blink down at their cat. Their somewhat fat, ridiculously cute tabby cat, who Eddie knows they left in New York.

“Oh, no,” says Eddie. “That’s not Jolene. Rich, tell it to sit.”

“Jolene’s not a _dog_,” says Richie, offended, but he orders, “Jolene, get _down_.”

Jolene sits. Jolene meows very cutely.

“Aww,” says Eddie, melting in the face of cuteness. “That’s a good kitty.”

“Who’s a good kitty?” Richie coos. “Who’s a good little kitty? Jojo?”

And then the thing that looks like Jolene meows again, and suddenly morphs into something much less cute. Richie screams and shuts the door on it.

“Next time we’re going for very scary!” he shouts, grabbing Eddie and pulling him away from the doors.

“_Next time?!_”

\--

Their first wedding ended in a snowstorm that blew out all the lights and cut them off right as they were getting to the vows.

“Honestly,” Sue had said, as Eddie complained about the venue’s lack of sleeping bags and the weather app’s bullshit and _the goddamn freak snowstorm_, “it could be worse.”

“Yeah,” said Veronica, philosophically. “At least nobody’s dead.”

“And no one’s tried to prank you,” said Carrie, with the tone of someone who had _checked_, and was fully willing to check again if needed.

“You guys fucking terrify me,” Steve informed them. He was sprawled out on Jonathan’s legs, with Nancy calling her brother off to the side and explaining that no, she, Steve and Jonathan could not make it to Hawkins for her nephew’s birthday on account of a freak snowstorm trapping them at a wedding venue. “You too, Eddie. Why do you have like six portable chargers?”

“In case this _exact thing_ happens,” says Eddie.

“I’ve got an extra if you need it,” said Richie, “but it’s like, 50%.” To the poor wedding officiant, chugging beer like there was no tomorrow, he said, “Hey, save a couple for me and Eds here, he’s about to explode.”

“I am _not_,” said Eddie. “I’m just—pissed off that our wedding got interrupted by a freak _fucking snowstorm_ that fucking _no one_ predicted, and now we’re gonna be stuck here with no food or water—”

Robin gave him a granola bar. “If you want food and water I can raid the kitchen,” she said. “I’m on good terms with the cook.”

“Do you mean good terms,” started Richie, “or _good_ terms?”

Robin smiled enigmatically.

“Oh my fucking _god_, Robin Buckley,” said Steve, shooting straight up with a surprised look on his face, “did you seduce the _cook_?”

“How the fuck do you have more game than I do?” Veronica asked incredulously. “You’re like fifty.”

“I am _distinguished_,” Robin proclaimed. “Also I have great taste in movies and music, unlike Steve over here whose boyfriend exposed him to The Cure too many times.”

“The Cure is a _classic_,” said Jonathan, not very heatedly.

“The Cure is overrated,” said Eddie, annoyed, needing to needle someone or else explode in frustration over his wedding being cut short. By fucking _weather_, good fucking god.

So that was Eddie and Richie’s first wedding: them and their friends, trapped in the wedding venue, shooting the shit with the officiant’s phone light for a nightlight. There was still something missing, something Eddie couldn’t quite grasp, but he let it go for now, let it be.

Their second wedding four days later went better, even though the venue was less grand. The officiant had barely pronounced them husbands when Eddie reeled Richie in for a kiss, and Richie, laughing, threw the bouquet over his head, just in time for Carrie to catch.

“Hey,” said Eddie, when they finally broke away, “we did it.”

“We made it,” said Richie.

“Yeah, ‘til death do us part,” said Eddie.

Richie’s smile could’ve lit up a damn Christmas tree, all by itself.

\--

(This is what will stay with Richie forever:

Eddie’s blood sprays onto his face, onto his glasses. Stains his fingers and his sleeves and his jacket, wedding band soaked in red. The human body has so much blood inside it, Richie never knew.

Eddie’s body is light in his arms. _‘Til death do us part. I’ll love you till I die and then beyond that._

And then the deadlights spit him out into reality, into cold hard stone. Eddie is leaning over him like in the dream, the vision, whatever, saying, “I think I did it! I think I killed It—”

Richie grabs him, and flips them both over.

Pain explodes somewhere in his chest. Blood sprays onto Eddie’s shirt, onto his face, and all Richie can think of to say is, “_Eds_,” almost apologetic. Fuck, it’s unhygienic, Eddie’s gonna be so annoyed. That’s a lot of blood.

It draws its tentacle back. Richie nearly collapses.

He hears Eddie whisper or shout or cry, “Richie!”)


	7. don't say goodbye love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Johnnyswim's "Say Goodnight Instead".

It dies.

It looks so small when it finally dies. Looks like the shitty fucking clown it preferred, and it’s strange, that they were so _scared_ of It for so long. But then, Eddie supposes, It knew that too. That’s why It tried to keep them scared, tried to turn Stan’s own head against him, tried so hard to terrify them into splitting up and running.

But there’s nothing left of the fear It used to stoke in Eddie’s heart. All he can think of is that he left his husband, waiting for him, and It’s kept him away for far too long.

It dies, and as soon as Eddie feels the—the _weight_, for lack of a better word, of Neibolt’s oppressive terror lift off his shoulders, he whips around on his heel and sprints towards Richie.

_Please be alive. Please be alive. Oh, god, Richie, please be alive._

\--

Their first dance together as husbands was to The Chordettes, singing “Eddie My Love”. Eddie figured that was probably Jonathan’s stepdad’s doing, and sure enough he saw old Jim Hopper giving them both a thumbs-up and a smug grin. Old bastard loved to pretend he had no idea what a Spotify was.

“I wish I’d taken you to prom, you know?” Richie said, as they slow-danced through the opening strains of Maroon 5’s “Sunday Morning”. “You step on my toes way less than my actual date did.”

“I didn’t go to prom at _all_,” Eddie confessed. “Mom was terrified I’d catch something.”

“I coulda talked her into it,” said Richie, and Eddie laughed, let Richie spin him around and then pull him back to lean against his chest.

“Yeah, _right_,” Eddie said. He didn’t want to let go of Richie. He didn’t want to let go of this moment. If he closed his eyes, he could almost picture it: the two of them younger, Richie’s curls combed back for once in his goddamn life, the both of them dressed in tuxes they would never wear again. They’d slow-dance, just like this, to Eddie Money and Redbone and Madonna, spin and laugh and sing along as best as they could. For a moment, Eddie could swear he saw, in that imagined crowd, five other faces that he loved so much it filled his heart up, made him feel so young again, so happy.

Here and now they were happy, too, even with all their missing pieces. Just married: Richie and Eddie Tozier, the comedian and the doctor, the most unlikely love story that ever happened. They were here now, they beat the odds. They _beat the odds_, and wasn’t that something worth celebrating.

Eddie twisted around and kissed him, and Richie kissed back, nearly stepping on his foot. The guy from Maroon 5 sang, _Come and rest your bones with me, driving slow on Sunday morning, and I never want to leave._

“We could’ve absolutely killed it on the dance floor,” said Richie. “You with your white dad moves and me with my forehead, we’d have been fucking high school legends.”

“Shut the fuck up, dickwad,” said Eddie, fondly, “your moves are worse than mine could ever hope to be.”

“That’s not what you said last night, my spaghetti-man,” said Richie, waggling his eyebrows.

“How many times have I _fucking_ told you, asshole,” said Eddie, “don’t call me that!” He jabbed Richie in the chest with his finger, and Richie only snickered, tapering off as they swayed together to the music. _Someday it’ll bring me back to you,_ the song went on, _find a way to bring myself back home to you._

He rested his head against Richie’s chest, and basked in the sound of his heartbeat, strong and steady.

“What about sweetheart?” Richie asked.

“Tolerable, honey,” said Eddie, and Richie pressed a kiss to the top of his scalp.

\--

“Richie? Richie, honey, wake up—It’s dead, we’re okay, you have to wake up now, sweetheart.”

Richie makes a soft noise, blinks awake. There’s a lot of blood, even with Eddie’s jacket serving as a makeshift tourniquet. But they’re going to be fine. They have to be. “Eds?” he mumbles, and Bev makes a noise behind them.

“Don’t call me that,” says Eddie.

“Eddie, I gotta tell you something,” Richie murmurs.

“You can tell me after we get out of here,” says Eddie. “Hey! Ben, Stan, help me get Richie up and out of here.” He presses his jacket deeper. _We are going to make it out of this house, all seven of us,_ he thinks. He believes it with all his heart. He has to. The house might be coming down around their ears, a final spiteful try by Pennywise at taking them down with him, but they are all going to make it out.

They’re the Losers’ Club, the lucky seven.

(Bev will never say this, but before Eddie got there, she was sure: Richie was dead. He’d closed his eyes and his chest was still, she had seen it. But then Eddie got there, believing Richie was not dead, and something—happened. A whisper on the wind, a spark of magic, and the world had shifted just enough so Richie was not dead at all, but halfway there.

She does not say it to them. She, Stan and Ben help Richie up, and Richie mumbles something about Ben single-handedly fighting for gay rights with his abs of steel, and she knows in her heart this is Richie, this is her friend. It is dead and gone, and Richie is somehow, impossibly, alive.

_This kills monsters if you believe it does._

Eddie’s good at believing. Maybe that’s all a miracle needs: someone believing strongly enough that something _will_ happen, that it does.)


	8. and i'm on my way to believing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Paramore's "The Only Exception".
> 
> just an epilogue to go! (there's a Parks and Rec reference in there. I'm sorry, I could not resist.)
> 
> **content warning:** allusions in the narrative to Bev having been abused by her husband and to Stan having attempted suicide, as well as to different characters' fucked-up backstories (Veronica mentions teenage suicides, Carrie mentions Chamberlain, and Nancy mentions Stranger Things' season one events). Carrie briefly attempts to poke at Eddie's brain telepathically for answers before giving up on the attempt, without Eddie knowing.

They get an ambulance, before Richie passes out from the blood loss. They get to the hospital, Eddie holding Richie’s hand the whole way there.

Eddie makes some calls. He does not call their lawyer, nor does he call anyone who could help him bury his husband.

In just over two days, Carrie and Sue take a car down from New York, with Jolene meowing in her carrier out of worry. Veronica flies in from a high school reunion in Sherwood, and hugs Eddie so hard that Eddie tears up all over again. Steve shows up with Nancy and says something about Jonathan catching a flight back from Beijing. “He’ll be here soon,” he says, and, “Jesus, Eddie, I’m sorry. Is there a guy I have to beat up?”

“No,” says Eddie, voice shaking. “No, we’re okay.”

Dustin shows up as well, which is a pleasant surprise—Eddie hadn’t realized he _had_ this many friends, had this many people who would worry about him and Richie besides the Losers’ Club. Dustin brings his friends along, Lucas and Max and Jane and Will and a white Mike who says, “Fuck, just call me Michael so no one gets confused,” and manfully pats Eddie on the back. Robin flies in from a movie festival in god knows where, and squeezes Eddie’s hand tightly.

It’s a strange round of introductions, to say the least. Mike actually seems to startle when Carrie introduces herself, but whatever it is, he gets over it fast, and soon enough the Losers are chattering with Eddie’s New York friends like they’re at least distant, well-liked relatives or something.

“I do not get it,” says Veronica, as they’re eating dinner in the hospital cafeteria (any further and Eddie gets too worried), “how did you guys manage to get into this much trouble in less than two days?”

Two days. Christ. Had it really been just two days ago, that Richie was running jokes past Eddie while Eddie complained for the sixth time about Jolene shedding pet dander all over the place?

Stan says, “Car accident.” They’ve practiced this story, flimsy as it is. “Between that and the escaped murderer—things have been strange, lately.”

Silence falls over all of them, as the story’s digested.

And then Carrie says, “You guys don’t _look_ like you were in a car accident.” She drums her fingers on the table, and Eddie suddenly gets the sense that she’s found a hole in their story and is unspooling it, bit by bit. “I know what a bruise looks like when I see one,” she says, “I think you got into a fight, and Richie barely made it out. I think whatever is wrong with Derry—”

“There’s nothing wrong with Derry,” says Eddie, and winces internally.

“—not now,” says Carrie. “But there _was_, wasn’t there?”

“We did research when we got your call,” says Nancy. “Derry has six times the national average of missing persons every year, consistently. Somehow it never makes it into the news. Somehow no one pays any attention to it, even though _they should_. One missing white boy and one missing white girl in Hawkins, and there were search parties. There were private investigators. There were _news items_.” She waves a hand to indicate their surroundings. “But Derry? There’s _nothing_. Something was wrong here. I think you guys know it.”

“Sherwood had a rash of teenage suicides in 1989 and we’re _still_ talking about it,” says Veronica. “What the fuck is in Derry that people keep going missing and keep getting murdered, and no one cares?”

“Chamberlain,” says Carrie, and nothing more. The lights above them flicker, and Sue straightens up, casting a glance at her girlfriend for a moment. The lights steady again.

Eddie looks at the Losers, at Bill. “Should we?” he asks. “It’s—I kind of want to wait till Richie’s awake.”

“Yeah,” says Bill. “It’s a l-lot. And no offense, but the truth is not something we can t-t-tell without Richie here to back us up.” It would feel wrong, telling the truth without Richie there.

“None of you would probably believe us anyway,” says Stan, somewhat pessimistic.

“Oh, buddy,” says Dustin, “just try us.”

\--

The townhouse gets more crowded over the next few days. It’s still the Losers’ makeshift headquarters, but now the rest of Eddie’s strange little friend circle keep cycling in and out of it, helping out with cleaning the place up. Veronica’s only stopped from heading out after Bowers once she sees the state of Eddie’s bathroom because Eddie grabs her by the back of her blazer and says, “He’s dead, Ronnie. I saw his body.”

“You have a _cheek hole_,” says Veronica, jabbing a finger into his chest. “What the fuck, man? Is there even any security here?”

“Yeah, well,” says Eddie, “question of the year right there. We’ve seen nobody who works here in the two days we’ve been here.”

“Where was Richie?” she asks.

“He didn’t know Bowers was in the room,” says Eddie. “Nobody knew. Fuck, Veronica, no one even knew he was even still _alive_. I just thought he’d died in the interim or something.” Probably some part of Bowers did die: the wisps of humanity he had, before It got its tendrils into him. But that was long ago.

Eddie doesn’t spend a lot of time at the townhouse. He goes to have some quality time with Jolene and shower and sleep, but when he’s not there he’s at the hospital, waiting with everyone else. Around them, Derry seems to finally be waking up from a centuries-long dream—there are more and more alerts about Derry, Maine on Eddie’s news feed, worried texts from his coworkers, even Joe asking _hey guys what the fuck is wrong with this place you’re in_.

Mostly, Eddie makes sure he’s there for Richie, especially after the doctor tells them he’s stable enough to receive visitors. Makes sure to sit next to him and talk about whatever, makes sure that his bandages are properly changed, makes sure that he’s comfortable and alive. “I’m his husband,” he says when the doctors ask him to leave, too tired to care what they might think of him. “I want to be here,” he says, like it matters that he’s here, like his presence could single-handedly heal up the tear in Richie’s chest.

On the fourth day Stan shows up and says, sounding a little relieved, “Patricia’s coming down here.”

Patricia—the head with the spider legs. “Oh,” says Eddie. “She’s okay?”

“Yeah, man, she’s fine,” says Stan. “I, um. I told her as much as I could—I couldn’t not, she’d see this,” he gestures to the bandage wrapped around his wrist, freshly changed, “and she’d be worried. And I can’t really lie to her about it.”

“If she doesn’t believe you, we’ll back you up,” says Eddie. “If Richie doesn’t wake up by the time she gets here I’ll just do double duty.”

“Yeah, speaking of you and Richie,” says Stan, “you should probably take a break.” He reaches over to squeeze Eddie’s hand, and god, they’d come so _close_ to losing Stan so many times, but he’d always pulled through for them in the end. He’d certainly pulled through in the lair, screaming Yiddish at It to tear it down. “He’s stable,” he says now. “He’ll still be here even if you eat lunch away from here.”

“But I have to be here,” says Eddie. “I mean, what if he wakes up? He needs—He needs a familiar face—”

“I’m as familiar to him as you are,” says Stan. He pauses, then adds, “Okay, maybe not that familiar, but he’s my best friend, Eddie.” He looks at Richie now, and Richie looks so _small_ in that hospital bed, hooked up to what feels like a hundred different machines keeping him alive. “It’s killing me to see him this way too,” says Stan, softly. “I’ll watch him.”

“If anything happens—” Eddie starts.

“You’re the first person I’ll call, I swear,” says Stan. “Go. Your friends want a tour of Derry, and Mike can only hold them at the library for so long.”

It’s a transparent excuse, but Eddie takes it. He presses a kiss to Richie’s forehead and whispers, “I’ll be back. Wake up soon, okay? I miss you.”

Richie doesn’t answer. Eddie brushes his thumb over Richie’s wedding ring, presses a last kiss there, and then walks out of the room.

\--

A year ago, they picked up a cat at an animal shelter. At the time, the cat’s name was Garfield, but a quick check-up had immediately proven the name to be unfitting for the cat.

“She’s a girl,” Eddie informed Richie, carrying the teeny little kitten in his arms while they were waiting on more test results from the vet. She was clean, he checked on that already, and they needed to socialize her so she would get used to humans. So far, a week into her life with them, she yowled incessantly whenever Eddie picked her up, and squirmed away when he tried to feed her food that was good for her. She much preferred trying to break into the rice.

“Well, fuck,” said Richie, “we can’t name a girl cat _Garfield_.”

“We can’t name our cat Garfield period, girl or not,” Eddie firmly said. The nameless cat squirmed and meowed unhappily, as over the clinic’s speakers, soothing country music played. “Do you want to doom her to obesity and lasagna?”

“Can cats even eat lasagna?” Richie wondered. He bent down to coo, “Can you eat lasagna, sweetie? Can you? Can you?”

“Do _not_ feed our cat lasagna,” Eddie ordered him.

“Dr. Tozier says you can’t,” said Richie. “Boo him.”

The cat meowed, displeased.

“See!” Richie nearly shouted, triumphant.

“She’s just mad I’m holding her,” said Eddie, as the vet came over with a clipboard in hand. “Hang on, you hold her.” And he foisted the kitten off on Richie, who quickly arranged her so she was cradled in his hands, meowing in deep displeasure about her current circumstances. Well, tough fucking luck, kitty.

_Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Joleeeeeene,_ Dolly Parton crooned over the speakers, _I’m beggin’ of you, please don’t take my man_. The cat—stopped, and seemed to twitch an ear towards the music. She meowed, inquisitively, tail waving in interest.

“Holy shit,” said Richie. “Eds. Eddie. How do you feel about Jolene?”

\--

“So you named your cat after a country song playing in the clinic?” Ben says now, as the two of them walk along a Derry sidewalk. Eddie is—trying not to look at his phone, trying not to check if Stan’s texted him and he just missed it somehow. He’ll call when anything happens, he said so himself, and Eddie trusts Stan to keep that promise. “What if a Broadway musical had been playing instead?”

“We’d have named her Hamilton or something,” says Eddie. “It came out just last year and I swear to you, I haven’t heard any other musical since, it’s driving me fucking nuts.” Richie had known that, and for a solid week he would sing random snippets of the musical just to get a rise out of him. What made it worse was that Richie wasn’t even any _good_ at rapping, for how fast he talked—there was a structure and flow to rap that Richie kept tripping over.

God, Eddie wants him to sing that stupid musical now. He’ll sing a fucking duet if it means Richie’s awake. He’ll _rap_, god help him, just to hear Richie’s voice making fun of him tripping over his own words. He’ll do anything just to hear Richie’s voice again, just to see him smile.

His eyes are burning with tears. He pinches the bridge of his nose, tries to surreptitiously wipe them away.

Ben’s hand rests on his shoulder and squeezes, gently. Eddie lets him steer him to a nearby bench, lets him sit him down so Eddie can furiously wipe the tears away.

“God, fuck,” says Eddie, “I’m—I’m sorry—”

“Hey, no, listen,” says Ben, “don’t be, okay? It’s fine. He’s your husband, you’re allowed.” He pulls on Eddie’s arm again, and Eddie leans into his hug, buries his face in Ben’s shoulder, and finally, finally lets the dam break. “You’re allowed,” says Ben, while Eddie _sobs_ into his shirt, probably ruining it with his snot and tears or something and not really caring. “He’ll be okay, but you are _allowed_ to feel—angry, and heartbroken, and all that shit, you saw him get fucking skewered by a murderous demon clown. If it were Bev in that hospital room…”

He trails off, and hugs Eddie tighter. If it were Bev, Eddie knows Ben would have to be pried off her bedside with a crowbar, unless one of the Losers was on watch.

It’s funny. Just days ago, he and Richie had been looking up Ben Hanscom and joking about how hot he’d gotten. Now Ben’s hugging him, and all Eddie wants is his husband back.

He says, “You know something?”

“Yeah?”

“If he didn’t roll me out of the way,” he says, still clinging tight to Ben, remembering the look on Richie’s face before he flipped them both over, the grief and the shock and the sheer relief, “I think I’d have been the one who got stabbed.”

“He saved your life,” says Ben.

“At what cost?” Eddie asks, sniffling.

“Eddie,” says Ben, breaking away from the hug but still keeping his hands on Eddie’s shoulders, “he wasn’t thinking about what it would cost him, personally, I can guarantee that. I’m pretty sure he was thinking about you, and how much he loved you, and how much he wanted you to get out of there alive.”

“I wanted him to get out of there without getting _stabbed_,” says Eddie.

“Can’t always get what we want, sadly,” says Ben, with a tired shrug. “He’s going to be fine, Eddie. Doctors say he’s stable, he’ll wake up soon, I’m sure.”

“_Soon_ is too vague,” Eddie mutters.

“It’s the best I can give you,” says Ben. “I wish I could give you more.”

“Hey, no,” says Eddie. “You’re—You’ve been good, Ben, you really have been.” He smiles, a little shaky, and says, “And I’m glad for you and Bev. You guys deserve to be happy.”

“You do too,” says Ben, squeezing his hand again.

\--

Inch by inch around them, Derry starts to shift towards the better. Now that It is dead and gone, the town finally seems to be coming awake and alive in a way it’s never done before—Eddie walks past a wall that used to be littered with racist graffiti and sees a young woman with bright blue hair painting something new over the old graffiti, strawberries and milkshakes and sunflowers. A family plays fetch with their dog. A little girl wanders near the storm drain and her mother grabs hold of her before she can go too far, pressing a kiss to her hairline.

Eddie walks into the library, just in time to see a floating book levitating slowly over to Carrie and Mike, talking quietly together.

“Uh,” says Eddie.

“Oh!” says Carrie. The book drops to the floor with a thud. “Hello, Eddie. Sue’s watching Jolene right now, I just—came here to talk with Mike.”

“Yeah, your friends are pretty interesting, Eddie,” says Mike.

“_Were you just levitating that book,_” says Eddie, his voice pitching upwards.

The book starts to float upwards again, and slowly meanders over to Carrie’s hand. She puts it down and says, “Yes,” so trepidatiously and so scared that Eddie immediately feels terrible. It’s Carrie. She once got them both out of a date neither of them wanted to be on, he’s got nothing to fear from her.

“I thought you hired a guy to blow out all the lights that time, but you know what, this explains so much,” he says, sitting down between her and Mike. “You should tell Richie. He’d get a kick out of it.”

“He can’t—He’s a comedian,” says Carrie, “he can’t talk about it.”

“Lots of things he doesn’t say in his sets, Carrie,” says Eddie. “This’ll just be one more.”

Mike glances at Carrie, and it’s a loaded look, a question in his gaze. She shakes her head, and he nods, as if understanding. Eddie almost feels left out, because Mike’s one of his oldest friends and Carrie is one of his best friends, and they’re already striking up conversations without talking. Whatever they talked about, it must’ve been intense.

“How long have you been able to do shit like that anyway?” Eddie asks.

“Since I was a kid,” says Carrie. “I can—sense things, too.”

“I asked her to check and see if Derry was—better now, for lack of a better word for it,” says Mike. “She says it’s clean.”

“Not _clean_,” says Carrie. “But—there used to be something here. There’s not anymore.” She looks between the two of them, and says, “Did you guys have something to do with it? Is that why Richie’s in the hospital?”

Eddie looks at Mike, who gives him a nod.

“Yes,” says Eddie. “And yes.”

“You can’t tell me more?”

Something crawls over his skin, over the back of his neck. Eddie scratches idly at it, and says, “I really can’t, Carrie. Not until Richie wakes up.”

As fast as it came, the itch is gone, and Carrie seems—resigned. A little guilty, perhaps, but resigned. “Okay,” she says. Then she pauses, and adds, “Whatever you did, it cleansed the town. Whatever evil was here before is gone now, and I don’t think it’s coming back.”

Eddie thinks about sacrifices, the smell of burning paper and plastic, the foul putrid scent of the sewer fading to the background. He thinks of Richie, the relief in his eyes, his hand on Eddie’s face before the claw came down.

“It had better not,” says Eddie, vehemently.

“We’d be _seventy_ if it did,” says Mike. “I don’t want to have to go through that bullshit while stuck in a wheelchair.”

Eddie briefly imagines an older Mike in a wheelchair, trying to get up the steps of Neibolt. He dissolves into giggles, and says, “God, Bill with that bike at _seventy_—”

They break into horrible giggles, then. Carrie blinks at them both, at a loss for what to do. “I don’t get it,” she says, frowning.

“It’s,” Eddie manages to say, “it’s just—I’d say you should’ve been there, just to get it, but it was just a really harrowing time. I’m glad you _don’t_ get it, Carrie, it means you weren’t there.”

“That bad, huh?”

Mike sobers up fast, and says, “Yeah. Exactly that bad.”

\--

The walls start to fall from there, little by little. Eddie walks into the townhouse, and Jonathan’s there, talking shop with Stan and Patricia over photography and nature and investigative reporting, his bags on the couch in the lobby. Eddie walks into Bev’s room and she, Robin and Sue are painting each other’s nails while Veronica’s recommending divorce lawyers Bev can talk to and Nancy’s talking to a contact about Bev’s asshole ex. Eddie goes looking for Ben and he finds him playing with Jolene, cooing gently as the cat bats at the ball he’s dangling above her head. Steve’s little Hawkins party’s taken over another hotel just down the street, where people actually work, and when Eddie goes there to sleep (because he can’t, not in his and Richie’s room, not with the blood in the bathroom and the blood on the carpet and Richie still asleep in the hospital), Bill and Mike are talking shop with Michael, Jane and Will.

“How the fuck do you know so many _famous people,_” Veronica says, as she and Eddie walk back to the hospital from lunch, where Eddie still spends a majority of his time. Richie’s stable, and barring any major complications, he’s expected to wake up within the next week or so. “Jesus Christ. _William Denbrough_ just paid for our lunch.”

“Richie’s technically famous and you don’t freak out over him,” Eddie points out. “Plus, so’re Steve’s Hawkins friends.”

“Richie doesn’t count and neither do the Hawkins gang,” says Veronica, dryly. “I watched his forehead grow to accommodate his ego in real time, the novelty wore off long ago, and Will Byers puked in my toilet before he started drawing for Marvel. But seriously: _how?_”

“We all grew up here,” says Eddie. “Me, Richie, the other Losers—this is our hometown. We used to hang out and play together everyday, till we started moving away from each other.” Until they all started to forget. It’s still strange, even now that most of the old memories have settled back where they belong: now he remembers Trashmouth Tozier and his shitty impressions, the glasses that made his eyes look fifty times bigger than they really were, the rampant jokes about Eddie’s mother. Now he remembers the funny, fluttery feeling in his chest, whenever Richie would look at him with that stupid goofy grin, doing a goofy Voice.

“You and Richie grew up together, huh?” Veronica asks. “That makes so much sense now, although—why did you guys never mention it before?”

“I forgot,” says Eddie.

“What, seriously?”

“Yeah, you know that time when we broke up, and I started to forget details about him after a week?” Eddie waves a hand. “It’s—this place, and the thing we can’t tell you about. Something about it just fucks with your memory until you can’t remember the people you grew up with once you leave, which is why we’ve been married four years and we’ve only known about the childhood crushes for maybe a week, tops.”

“So what happens if you leave now?” Veronica asks, pushing the door to the hospital open for Eddie to step through. “Like, do you forget again?”

“I don’t think so,” Eddie says. “Bill’s left a few times already—he’s writing a screenplay and a new book all at once—and he texts us everyday.” He shrugs. “If any memory shit happens after this, it’ll probably just be Alzheimer’s way down the line, nothing specific to Derry.” Hopefully not, Eddie wants to remember everything until the day he dies, the good and the bad. Even the goddamn clown.

“So you and Richie can finally be on different coasts without you having to fly to him because you forgot how he took his coffee,” Veronica translates.

“I didn’t _fly_ to him,” says Eddie. He’s done a lot of things whenever Richie goes on tour, but flying out to Richie is—okay, not _rare_, but not something he does too often.

“No, you called me up, freaked out about it, and told me you probably had encephalitis,” Veronica says. “And then I had to call _him_ so he’d calm you down and tell how he took his coffee.”

“Milk and too much sugar,” Eddie says. “I can’t believe I married someone with cavities.”

“Yeah, neither can I,” says Veronica. She claps him on the back. “He’s going to be okay,” she tells him.

“I know,” says Eddie.

\--

Bev finds Eddie sitting by his husband’s bedside, his hand resting over Richie’s, and says, “You know, I don’t think we ever asked, but—how did you guys meet up again? We didn’t remember each other before we came back here, but you and Richie somehow remembered each other.”

“No, we didn’t,” says Eddie, scooting his chair over to make room for Beverly. “The first time we met was at a bar in New York, and he was doing this bit his roommate wrote for him. He came down afterwards, made a joke about my dead mom, and I threw my drink in his face.” He can still picture the shock on Richie’s face, like he hadn’t expected a drink to get splashed onto him and his shitty Hawaiian shirt. “I mean, he was a _stranger_, and I was already in a bad mood. My blind date stood me up.”

Bev laughs, a little. “It’s fine,” she says, “that’s a normal reaction to have to strangers telling you they fucked your dead mom.” She pushes some strands of red hair back behind her ear. “So how’d you guys even start dating?”

“I came back to the same bar,” Eddie says. “And then he flirted with me, and we talked, and he took me home.” And now here they are, with Richie in a hospital bed and Eddie holding his hand. “We never remembered each other until we came back here, but—Carrie used to say, the way we acted with each other, it felt like she was watching people who’d known each other their whole lives.” He huffs out a mirthless laugh. “I guess she was right the whole time.”

Richie’s chest rises, falls, in a steady rhythm. The heart monitor beeps steadily, telling them that Richie’s heart is beating the way it should.

“You guys got incredibly lucky, finding each other,” says Bev. “I’m glad for you both.”

“I’m glad you found Ben again,” says Eddie. “You deserve the best, Bev.”

She smiles, and it’s real this time, nothing like the tight smile she wore when she changed the subject away from her husband. She’s gotten a restraining order against him now, and Eddie gets this funny feeling that if her shitbag ex goes after her anyway, he’s not going to survive the confrontation. “Thanks,” she says. “Ben’s—he’s a good guy, you know? I showed him a few fashion sketches I did, just to get them on the page, and we talked for an hour about fashion history.” She leans back against her chair and says, with tears of relieved joy in her eyes, “He listened. The whole time. Even when I started ranting about frills, he sat there and he listened to me, only asked to clear a few things up first. You know, I think he took _notes_.”

“Keep him,” says Eddie, wiping away his own tears. “You’ve got to keep him, Bev.” Richie didn’t take notes whenever Eddie ranted, but he looked at him with just that faintest smile on his face, like Eddie’s rants were a gift that Richie fully intended to cherish for as long as he lived. It’s not hard to see Ben looking at Beverly the same way, like her voice is music to his ears even while she rants about frills.

“If he’ll let me,” says Bev.

“He’s been carrying a torch for you since we were thirteen,” says Eddie. “He wants you to keep him.” Absently, he rubs a thumb over Richie’s wedding ring. “I just want you to do one thing for me.”

“What?”

“_Please_ play something that isn’t New Kids on the Block.”

\--

Bill’s on watch when Richie finally wakes up, ironically while Eddie’s asleep. He wakes up fast, though, when Bill calls him and says, “He’s awake. He w-w-wants you.”

“I’ll be there ASAP,” says Eddie. He practically flies out of the townhouse to the hospital, he’s hurrying so much, and it’s only when he gets to the hospital that he realizes he’s still in his pajamas, sweatpants and an old band T-shirt from college. He’d have a heart attack about this if he wasn’t already working himself up into a minor freak-out about his husband.

Thank fucking god for Bill, swooping in out of nowhere. “He’s the husband,” he tells the lady at the counter. “He’s b-buh-been waiting for th-th-this.”

Richie’s still in the hospital bed, but his face lights up when he sees Eddie. Funny. Eddie’s heart finally feels so much lighter when he sees him. “Eds!” says Richie. “Fuck, I’d hug you right now if it wouldn’t fucking rip me open.”

“I’ll just leave you t-two to it,” Bill says, clapping Eddie on the back before he makes a graceful exit. Eddie steps forward, then takes Richie’s hand as he sits down, trying not to bawl too much.

“You’re in sweatpants,” says Richie. “Shit. I wake you up or something?”

“Yeah, but I don’t mind,” says Eddie. “Fuck. You _asshole_.” He hugs him, as carefully as possible, and it’s more of a loose wrap than the tight embraces he’s used to giving and getting. “Don’t ever fucking do that again, Jesus.”

“What, save your life?” Richie asks.

“Almost get _killed_,” says Eddie, and it’s the first time he’s said that out loud. “You had like three surgeries before they said you were stable. God. You fucking dickhead, I _missed you_.”

“Oh,” says Richie. “Fuck. C’mere.”

Eddie leans in, and Richie presses a kiss to his lips, a brief little thing that ends too fast for Eddie’s liking. “Why’d you do that, huh?” Eddie asks him.

Richie hesitates a moment. Then he lets out a breath, and says, “D’you remember when Bev said she saw us die?”

“Yeah,” says Eddie, lacing his fingers with Richie’s. “Why?”

“In the deadlights,” says Richie. “I saw It stab you.” He breathes out slow, squeezes Eddie’s hand like he’s scared it’ll slip out of his grasp. “I couldn’t let it happen. I knew I’d probably die, and I really didn’t fucking want to, but—all I could think of was that I wanted you to stay alive more.”

If Richie had died, Eddie’s pretty sure he’d follow him down to the grave. Not via taking his own life, by any means, but he’d just—fade away, truck on until the time comes, like an old man whose beloved wife goes first. He’s a doctor, he’s seen them. When the wife dies, the husband isn’t far behind. It’s like the fight goes out of them, the minute the reason for it is gone.

_‘Til death do us part._

“I want you alive too,” says Eddie, caressing his husband’s cheek. Richie leans into it, and breathes out slow. “Back there, in that place—what were you gonna say?”

“I fucked your mom,” says Richie.

Eddie pinches his cheek.

“_Ow_, kidding,” Richie huffs, smacking his hand away. “No, I was—I was going to say that I loved you since we were kids. I was going to tell you I carved our initials into the kissing bridge, like a total sadsack.”

“Wait,” says Eddie, “that was you? R plus E, that was _you_?”

“What, you saw?” Richie asks.

“Yeah, but I thought it stood for somebody else’s initials!” Eddie says. “Like, fuck, Rebecca plus Earl or something. Holy fuck, Rich—I carved your initial into a heart a little below that, I didn’t even know it was for _us_.”

“Holy shit,” says Richie, like he’s just been told that he just won an Emmy Award and is still trying to sort through the baffling, confusing storm of emotions in his head. “We were both total teenage sadsacks.”

Eddie laughs, and for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, it feels real. It feels true. “God, we _were_,” he says. “That’s so embarrassing, you had a crush on me.”

“We’re married,” Richie says, but his eyes are fond, and he brings Eddie’s hand up to his lips to press a kiss to his wedding ring, glinting gold in the fluorescent lights.

“Yeah, but, you know, _still_,” says Eddie. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They rest their foreheads together for a moment, and Eddie finally, finally feels a knot in his gut begin to ease. He can breathe again.

Richie is alive.

Everything’s going to be just fine.


	9. EPILOGUE: say you'll stay with me tonight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from P!nk's "Walk Me Home".
> 
> we made it, fellas. no real content warnings this time other than for Richie's mouth and some dirty puns about balls. this is just. Fluff.
> 
> I cried three times writing this chapter.

“You’re moving out of Derry?” Richie asked. They were sixteen years old, three years out from defeating It, and Eddie was—noticing him, more often now. Richie was growing taller, filling out more, and he was catching a lot of attention from a lot of girls more often. Sometimes he’d look back, but Eddie was well-versed in Richie by now, he knew Richie didn’t really look back for long.

They were walking down the street to Richie’s house, where Eddie was planning to sleep over for the night. Technically he and Richie had a school project they needed to finish, but in truth Eddie had just wanted out of the house for a night. They had already finished the school project, because Eddie cared about his grades and Richie actually liked the class, but Richie had made up some last stage that needed to be done at his house because his father’s office had the materials for it, and now here they were.

Eddie sighed. “Yeah,” he said, and fiddled with his sleeve. “My mom’s getting sicker, and we can’t really afford to keep going back and forth between the hospital and here. So.” He shrugged, looking down at his shoes and kicking a rock along. “We’re moving out before summer ends this year. My uncle already found a house, like, in upstate _New York_, so that’s fucking swell, and now we’re just looking for a school I can get into for next year.”

“Aw,” said Richie, and Eddie was already rolling his eyes heavenward when Richie continued, “I’m gonna miss your mom’s tits. She’s just got the softest—”

“Oh, shut up,” Eddie huffed, smacking his shoulder. “God, I’m so not gonna miss this place. Derry just straight up sucks.”

Richie’s face did something odd, before he grinned. “Yeah, Derry’s fucking awful,” he said. “I’ve got a plan, though. I can sneak out of here in your suitcase.”

“Your legs are too freakishly long to fit into my biggest suitcase,” Eddie retorted. “Also, you’d die.”

“I’m working on being a contortionist,” said Richie. “And you can just cut little airholes in! No one would have to know!”

“Do you want to fuck up your spine forever or something,” said Eddie, not very heatedly, but still getting into the swing of the argument. “You could get a back injury and then you’d have back problems for fucking _ever_. You could get osteoarthritis if you stretch your ligaments too far, and that’s without getting into the performance schedules!”

Richie snorted out a laugh. “But I could suck my own dick,” he said, “and do you know how cool that would be at parties?”

“_Ew,_” said Eddie, and pushed Richie’s face away with his hand. Richie cackled in answer, and bumped his shoulder on the rebound. “God, that’s disgusting.”

Richie hummed. Then he said, “Hey, Eds?”

“Yeah?”

“If the suitcase plan doesn’t pan out,” which Eddie snorted at because of course it wouldn’t, so many things could go wrong with it that it wasn’t even worth trying, “I’m going to leave Derry when I turn eighteen. Just—pack my shit and get out of town, and get into radio. Or comedy, I’m not sure yet, but someday,” Richie tipped his head back and swept his hand across, “my name is going to be in _lights_. Richie Tozier, famous star!”

“Yeah, famous for playing nerdy little assholes overcompensating for their tiny dick,” huffed Eddie.

“Or famous for playing _any character_ fucking flawlessly,” said Richie. “I’m gonna get my start in New York, though.”

Eddie’s heart skipped a beat. “Why New York?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light and casual, even joking.

“You’re there,” said Richie, with a casual shrug. Eddie’s traitorous heart did acrobatic flips in his chest. “Better keep your couch open for me. I’m gonna crash on it a lot.”

“If you drool on my couch in New York I will kick your ass out the window,” Eddie told him, as they walked up the steps to Richie’s house. He could already hear the sound of Richie’s mom bustling about, preparing dinner for them. How long would it be, he wondered, until he would be at this house, eating Maggie Tozier’s dinner and hanging out with his best friend, for the last time? “I swear to god I will.”

“Until then I’ll write,” said Richie. “And call. I gotta get my daily dose of Mrs. K in, yanno.”

Eddie nudged his side. “Ugh, shut up,” he said. “But I absolutely expect you to write and call, okay? Just because we’re gonna be apart doesn’t mean we’re not gonna still be friends.”

Neither of them mentioned Bev, or Stan, and how their promises to call and write regularly had been broken in time. Eddie had figured, well, maybe they were busy. Maybe they didn’t want to think about Derry anymore, which Eddie didn’t blame them for. He didn’t want to think about Derry anymore either, and he still lived in it.

“Of course,” Richie promised. “I’m gonna visit you when I finally get to New York. First thing I do, I’m knocking on your door and crashing on your couch, and ain’t nothin’ you can do ‘bout it, _padre_.” This last part, he said in a Southern accent, and Eddie rolled his eyes again.

“I’ll decontaminate you first,” he said.

“Kinky, Eds,” said Richie. He slid his key out of his jacket pocket. “Now come on in.”

\--

**the REAL richie tozier** _@richtozier_  
day 138 of comedy hiatus: jolene and i are warring over the couch, if i die from jolene assassinating me in my sleep pls tell @EdwardTozier never to marry or i will haunt his ass forever

**Beverly Marsh** _@BevMarsh_  
_Replying to the REAL richie tozier_  
#TeamJolene tbh

**stan the man** _@stanaccount_  
_Replying to Beverly Marsh & the REAL richie tozier_  
also #TeamJolene sorry Rich, your cat’s cuter than you are

**Bill Denbrough** _@BillIsWriting_  
_Replying to Beverly Marsh, stan the man & the REAL richie tozier_  
I’m also #TeamJolene, not sorry

**Ben Hanscom** _@benjaminhanscom_  
_Replying to Bill Denbrough, Beverly Marsh, stan the man & 1 other user_  
I’m #TeamRichie out of pity

**drop the mike** _@mikehanlon_  
_Replying to Ben Hanscom, Bill Denbrough, Beverly Marsh & 2 other users_  
I thought you liked Jolene? #TeamJolene

**#TeamJolene** _@EdwardTozier_  
_Replying to drop the mike, Ben Hanscom, Bill Denbrough, & 3 other users_  
Richie just get off the couch and let Jolene have it, you can sleep on the bed instead like you’re SUPPOSED to instead of fucking your back up on the couch and pissing the cat off

**the REAL richie tozier** _@richtozier_  
_Replying to #TeamJolene, drop the mike, Ben Hanscom, & 4 other users_  
et tu brutus? brutii? eddie my babes i thought you LOVED me

**karen dragonslayer page** _@mollytrashmouth_  
_Replying to the REAL richie tozier_  
okay when was someone gonna tell me that Richie Tozier the comedian somehow knows Beverly Marsh the fashion designer and Bill Denbrough the horror writer bc this thread just suplexed me

**stream killing eve s2** _@lesbianvillanele_  
_Replying to karen dragonslayer page & the REAL richie tozier_  
he also knows ben hanscom the architect who did the bbc tower + reporter/photographer duo nancy wheeler and jonathan byers + has connections to the other wheelers/byers and the sinclairs

**karen dragonslayer page** _@mollytrashmouth_  
_Replying to stream killing eve s2, karen dragonslayer page & the REAL richie tozier_  
what the hap is fuckening

\--

“Happy Thanksgiving!” Bev shouts, her arms full of casserole as she hip-checks the door open, followed by Ben carrying a huge turkey in. “We got the turkey and the casserole!”

“Thank fucking god,” says Eddie, rushing over to grab the casserole from Bev’s hands, “just put the turkey and the casserole down here—Jolene, get off that chair, someone’s gonna sit on it—Rich! How’re the matzo balls?”

“They’re _fine_!” Richie calls, poking his head out of the kitchen. “Ben, come in here, you’re a better cook than everyone we know, you’re on kitchen duty.” He brandishes a wooden spoon at Ben and says, “Chop fuckin’ chop, Haystack, we’ve got twelve mouths to feed and one of them is psychic!”

“I thought Carrie and Sue had their own thing?” Eddie asks, racing over to the kitchen, where Richie’s stirring a pot with a single-minded determination. He chances a worried glance at the oven. Is the carrot cake rising like it’s supposed to? Christ. “Carrie mentioned they were going to celebrate their anniversary—”

“Their venue sprang a leak,” says Richie, “so now they’re coming here instead.”

“Fucking great,” Eddie mutters, revising his mental calculations of just how much food they’re going to need. He’s going to have to make a grocery run. Jesus fucking Christ. Is Veronica bringing a plus-one? She’s been talking about dating someone lately, she might bring them to the dinner. “Rich, Ben, hold down the kitchen, I’m going to the grocery. Bev, can you—”

“I’ve got Jolene, don’t worry,” says Bev, from the living room.

“Good luck,” says Richie, pecking him on the cheek. “Me and Ben’ll make out on the table while you’re gone.”

“Don’t you make out on the kitchen table,” says Eddie. “The couch is right there.” He immediately runs out the door before Richie can answer, but he hears Ben and Bev’s laughter all the same.

He almost runs over Patricia, on his way off his porch. “Oh, _shit_—”

“Hello to you too, Eddie,” says Patricia, expertly sidestepping him, her hands full of what looks like delicious soup. Are those wontons? “Stan’s trying to park somewhere—did you really have to live in New York? There’s no _parking spots._”

“Yeah, I know, traffic is shit and the crime rate is too damn high,” says Eddie. “Richie and Ben are in the kitchen, Bev’s handling Jolene. I’m just heading for a grocery run.”

“Good luck,” says Patricia, sympathetically.

Eddie bolts down the sidewalk, past Mike and Stan with barely a hello (“is it just me or does he look like he’s in a hurry?” “I think someone’s bringing a plus-one”), and runs as far and as fast as he can to the old bodega. He almost collides into a blind guy and his long-haired buddy, and definitely ruins some poor soul’s day grabbing what looks like the _very last_ basket. Then he starts putting food into the basket—they’ll need cheese, they’ll need extra vegetables, they’ll need kosher meats for Stan and Patty, non-dairy for Richie, and he knows Carrie likes pasta and Sue loves mac and cheese specifically. And salads for Ben? He’d mentioned working on food issues, should Eddie be getting him salads?

_what are you good to eat,_ he finally texts Ben.

_turkey,_ is Ben’s succinct answer. _balls are done btw. making more. Jolene is trying to sneak off with food._

_we fed her already,_ Eddie writes. _if she meows sadly at you she is lying to your face._ Then he stuffs his phone back into his pocket and starts putting more food in. By the time he finishes up, the basket’s heavy enough that Eddie half-thinks it’ll stretch his arm out on the way back, but it’s a small price to pay to be able to feed _twelve fucking people_, Jesus. How do they know so many people? How did he and Richie go from Thanksgivings for two, maybe three or four sometimes, to cooking and setting a table for twelve people?

_Well, you know, don’t you._ It sounds like his own voice in his head, this time—not It, not his mother, not even Richie.

When he comes back to the house, Stan and Mike are inside, and Richie has ruthlessly recruited Stan and Patricia into his kitchen brigade. Mike and Bev are cooing at Jolene, and there’s a laptop on the coffee table where Eddie can see Steve’s distinctive hair.

“How’s Hawkins?” he calls to Steve.

“Fuckin’ fantastic, Eddie,” Steve says, his voice tinny through the speakers. “Hop’s making some weird Russian shit, uh, pee-roz—”

“Pirozhki!” Hopper shouts from a distance.

“Little Russian dumpling things,” says Steve. “Can’t wait to try them, Robin says they’re great. Hang on, is Bill there yet, our Mike wants to yell at him about—something? I dunno, he was reading one of Bill’s older novels and he must’ve gotten to the end.”

“Give him two hours,” says Mike on the couch. “New York traffic is something else.”

“Cool!” says Steve. “Shoulda come to Hawkins with the rest of us. New York’s great but the traffic is _shiiiiiiit._”

“Hawkins has interdimensional plant monsters,” says Eddie.

“_Had_.”

“We just came off fighting a sewer clown, you think we’re up for taking that chance?” Eddie asks, shifting his groceries around. “No. Absolutely not. Never gonna happen. See you next week, Steve!” He rushes into the kitchen and says, “Okay, I got the groceries, I’m going to call Carrie and ask if she or Sue have dietary restrictions—”

“Sue can’t eat pork,” Richie says, brandishing his phone. He’s leaning against the counter, wearing an apron that reads _Kiss the Cook_, and there’s flour dusting his cheek. “I texted them already, don’t worry.”

“Whose matzo ball recipes are you guys even using? Mrs. Tozier’s?” Stan asks, scooping up the now-finished matzo balls and inspecting them with a critical eye. “This is—no, just, you know what, give me the matzah meal, I’ll start from scratch. Patty, come taste Richie’s mom’s balls.”

“How dare you, my mom’s balls taste great,” says Richie, but he hands the flatbread over to Stan anyway.

“We’re not dignifying that with a response, are we?” Eddie asks.

“Nope,” says Stan, and Richie pouts at both of them. Eddie resists the urge to pinch his cheek, because that would be a response.

Patricia takes a bite of them, makes a face, and says, looking at Richie dead in the eye, “They just—They don’t taste as good as my dad’s, you know?”

Richie gasps, theatrically, and puts a hand over his heart. “Babe,” he says, practically swooning into Eddie’s arms, “Patricia just killed me, _avenge me._”

“Get the fuck up, asshole,” Eddie ruthlessly says, pushing him upright, “your corpse is not ruining the first Thanksgiving of the Losers’ Club in twenty-seven years.”

“Cake’s done,” Ben reports. “You guys are done flirting, right?”

\--

They sat up in Richie’s bed together, hiding under the covers with a flashlight and a comic book. It was getting difficult doing that, Richie was getting taller at a rate Eddie could only boggle at in shock, but they tried their best anyway.

“Holy fucking shit,” said Eddie, “Wonder Woman lost her powers? For real?”

“_Yeah,_” said Richie. “It’s so fucking weird. Does she even count as Wonder Woman if she’s not superpowered, or what?” He flopped down on the bed, throwing the covers off.

“I mean, she’s got to be,” Eddie reasoned. “Who else would it be?”

“Her super hot mom?”

“Ugh.” Eddie flopped back onto the bed as well, and looked up at the ceiling. There used to be glow-in-the-dark stars up there, but now they had been removed, leaving a black sky behind. “Are we still gonna be friends when I leave for New York?” he asked.

Richie looked over. Then he smiled, softly. “Of course,” he said. “Always. You and me, we’re a package deal. You go to New York, sooner or later, that’s where I’ll end up too.”

“Bev didn’t write back, though,” said Eddie, and Richie’s smile faded at the mention of their friend, long gone for Portland. “Or Stan.”

Richie picked at the cuff of his sleeve. “Guess they just got busy,” he said. “Well, whatever. You’ll still have time for me, I bet. We’ll always have time for each other.” He sounded so certain of this, as though it was simply a truth of the universe, an incontrovertible fact. Eddie wanted that certainty in something, besides pills and medicines and the wonders of modern medicine. “Losers stick together,” said Richie.

“Yeah, we do,” said Eddie, staring at Richie in the moonlight. Fuck, but he wanted to stare at him forever. He looked beautiful like this, like a boy made from a dream, all sharp angles yet somehow still soft enough to touch. And god, how Eddie wanted to touch him. “You’ve got something in your teeth,” he said, to cover.

“What? Really? Oh, jeez, how long’s it been there?”

“You’re asking me?” said Eddie. “This is the first time I’ve noticed! This is why you should be carrying a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste around all the time—”

“God, Eddie, you virgin, quit trying to ride my ass over it,” said Richie, reaching over to smack at Eddie’s shoulder, and it felt so normal that Eddie could sink into it. Could let himself forget, just for a few moments, that one day he wouldn’t be able to do this again, because he would be gone from here.

He didn’t like Derry. He didn’t want to stay here a moment longer than necessary.

But god, there were people here he wanted to keep, just for a little while longer.

\--

“Hey, guys,” says Veronica, when Eddie opens the door to let her, her pumpkin pies, and her apparent plus-one in, “this is Martha Dunnstock. Martha, these are my friends, the ones I told you about.” She shoots Richie behind him a look that says, in loud tones, _Be fucking nice or your face is going into one of these pies._

Martha, a short, fat woman in pink and blue and a unicorn hat who looks about the same age as Veronica, beams up at Eddie as she steps forward. “Hey!” she says. “Oh, it’s so good to meet you guys! Veronica’s told me so much about you all.” She sticks her hand out. “You must be Eddie,” she says, “and this is Richie Tozier! Oh, gosh, I’ve seen your specials, they were _great_.”

Veronica, right behind her friend, mouths, _Your face, this pie, Trashmouth._

“Always good to meet one of Richie’s fans,” says Eddie, shaking Martha’s hand before Richie can say something that’ll cause a fight. “Come on in, the table’s almost ready.”

“Yeah, Carrie and Sue came in before you guys did,” says Richie, and with a glance towards Veronica, “Hey, so, Martha—good to meet you, never thought I’d be letting a fan into my house. How’s it so far?”

“A lot messier than I thought it would be,” Martha admits.

“Thanksgiving,” says Eddie, darkly. “Have you got any allergies, Martha?” To Veronica he whispers, “Why didn’t you _say anything_ about a date?”

“She just flew in from San Diego yesterday!” Veronica whispers back. “I was honestly planning to cancel so I could hang out with her and watch _The Princess Bride_, I haven’t seen her in months thanks to her podcast, but she really wanted to meet you guys.”

The turkey is now out on the table, as are the new and improved matzo ball soup, the wonton soup, the carrot cake, and the cupcakes that Sue baked for them. There’s a pitcher of iced tea and another pitcher full of soda, bottles upon bottles of various liquors, and Carrie is slowly floating a cupcake over to the sofa, all for herself. Martha only does a small double-take before she shakes herself, turns to Veronica and says, “Oh, so—that weird, huh? I mean, you told me a little, but that’s. _Wow._”

“Yeah, suddenly I’m the one with the most normal trauma, relatively speaking,” says Veronica, dryly.

The cupcake floats over to Carrie’s hand, and she looks at Martha intently, her eyes narrowing, as if waiting on her to say something.

“That was _cool_,” says Martha, and Carrie relaxes visibly. “Oh! I brought sparkling cider, by the way!” She holds the bottle aloft, like a prize.

“Oh, thank god,” says Mike, trooping out of the kitchen and taking it from her. “We needed some more non-alcoholic options around.”

“It’s _Thanksgiving_,” says Richie, “you’re supposed to get drunk!” He bends down to pick up Jolene and says, “Right, Jojo?”

“Yeah, but some of us have to drive back to our hotels, Rich,” says Stan, coming out of the kitchen with a plate full of mashed potatoes.

“Just crash on the couch,” Richie starts.

“Thirteen people cannot crash in our house, Richie,” says Eddie, cutting into Richie’s space. “We can keep two or three people in the guest room, five if people are willing to cram sleeping bags in there, but thirteen people is _too fucking much_. We’d have to make thirteen hangover cures and we’d have to deal with whatever dirt and mud and shit thirteen people walking or driving around New York have tracked into and we’d have to cram _thirteen fucking people_ into our guest room and onto our couch and do you _know_ what the sweat and drool of thirteen people on our _couch cushions_ and our _bedspreads_ could probably carry?! And we have a _cat_ who’ll deploy offensive tactics against anyone on the couch!”

Richie blinks at him, slightly thrown, his eyes somewhat dazed. Everyone in earshot, which is basically everyone in the living room and the kitchen, is staring at Eddie.

“I’m good at making hangover cures,” says Veronica, breaking the silence.

“Bev and I have sleeping bags in our car,” Ben says.

“We can just crash on the floor of your guest room,” says Bev, shrugging.

“Yeah, me too,” says Mike.

“I’m going back to the hotel,” says Stan. “I love you all, but Patricia and I have plans after Thanksgiving dinner.” Patricia, at that, smiles slyly and leans into her husband’s side, their arms slipping around each other’s waists. Never has it been more obvious that they’re planning to have wild sex afterwards than this moment, and Eddie can only be grateful they’re doing him the courtesy of not going at it in his house, on the guest room bed. Just. No.

“I’ll take the couch,” says Martha.

“No, that’s Jolene’s throne now,” says Veronica.

The doorbell rings again, and Eddie immediately abandons the Losers and assorted others to their ruthless division of Eddie’s guest room to pull the door open. Bill stands on the step, holding a plate of mac and cheese, and his wife Audra tilts her sunglasses down and smiles brightly at Eddie.

“Oh, thank fucking god you’re here,” says Eddie, pulling Bill into a hug, careful not to spill the mac and cheese. “Please tell me you guys have a hotel booked. Everyone’s planning on an impromptu sleepover.”

“Yeah, we’ve got a hotel booked,” says Bill. He doesn’t hug back by virtue of the fact that his hands are full, but he leans into it as much as he can, only reluctantly breaking away. “Eddie, this is Audra. Audra, Eddie.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Eddie,” says Audra, holding her hand out. Eddie shakes her hand, then lets go of it. “Bill’s told me a lot about you guys,” she adds.

“Including the,” Eddie starts, then stops, because how does he delicately put that whole hellish time into words? Especially for someone who hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen It, hadn’t been subjected to the horrors on that house on Neibolt Street. “The horror movie parts?” he finally says.

Audra winces. “Yeah, he mentioned,” she says. “It honestly explains so much.”

“We’re not late, are we?” Bill asks.

“No, you’re just in time,” says Eddie, taking the mac and cheese from him. “Guys!” he shouts behind him. “Bill’s here!”

The Losers’ Club practically storm the front door, in a rush to pull Bill into a seven-way hug.

\--

It was a warm summer day when Eddie biked down to the kissing bridge, a pocket knife in hand. In two days, he would be gone from here, but there was something he needed to do first.

He parked his bike by a fencepost. Then he knelt near the railing and started to carve into the wood.

It was fiddly, to say the least. Eddie didn’t have much practice at carving things, and he kept nearly nicking himself on the knife, or on a splinter. But this was important, this needed to come out of him somehow. And no one else would need to know, really, just him.

He carved the R. Then he painstakingly carved the heart around it, trying to curve as best as he could. It seemed pretty good, for his first time.

When he finished, he blew on it, then stood up. He pocketed the knife once more, got on his bike, and rode away.

He didn’t notice the other carving, above his new one. It was older, it had been there since he and Richie were thirteen. It had survived three years and would survive twenty-four more, fading with time until Richie came back here, with Eddie and a knife, to carve the initials deeper again, like scars on a heart. Like a marriage vow.

_R + E,_ it said.

It, and the R inside a misshapen heart carved two days before Eddie left for New York, meant, _I love you. I loved you when we were kids and I loved you when I didn’t know your name. I’ll love you until death and I’ll love you beyond that. You are the first person I have ever loved, and no matter what happens, you will carry my heart with you. I love you._

\--

There will be other Thanksgivings, after this one. Hanukkahs, Christmases, Festivuses, anniversaries, weddings. There will be chance meetings, and reunions just because, and crashing on couches after long flights, and group Skype calls. There will be years, decades, of this—of love, and laughter, and the light that comes after a long night has finally passed.

But for now: Richie raises a toast, and says, “I’m thankful I finally got cleared to have sex with my husband!”

The table erupts into laughter, and even some joking _beep beep_s. Eddie rolls his eyes theatrically and flicks his husband’s nose, and Richie huffs out a laugh and kisses his cheek.

“I’m thankful you finally got cleared for heavy-lifting,” Eddie retorts.

Their fingers lace together under the table. Eddie leans into his husband’s warmth, as everyone else goes into what they’re thankful for: wine, good food, friends, lead roles, new screenplays, awards, books, poetry on the back of a Derry postcard, birds, engagements and upcoming weddings, so many things.

This is what Eddie is thankful for: not only is his husband alive, but his family is here, and whole. No more missing pieces. There will be many more Thanksgivings and holidays to come.

He squeezes Richie’s hand tight. Here they are, the seven of them, the Lucky Seven.

They’ve made it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [like calls to like](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209954) by [godmarked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/godmarked/pseuds/godmarked)


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